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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 461

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Displaying the relevance of identity in interaction

Authors: Raevaara, Liisa
Submitted by: Raevaara, Liisa (Institute for the Languages of Finland, Finland)

This paper focuses on the use of word meitsi in interactions among adolescents in Helsinki. Meitsi is a word meaning 'I' but needing the finite verb inflected in a third person singular, instead of a first person singular. In the local spoken Finnish in the Helsinki area, the common 1^st person singular pronoun is mä, and it is also the most usual form used by the adolescents in Helsinki. However, also meitsi is used quite commonly by some adolescents. Meitsi is a variant characteristic especially of rap texts and hip hop style, and it may indicate the speaker's identification with this subculture.

In the interactions among youngsters, meitsi has other functions, too. As a third person form it invokes  a particular perspective in utterances that refer to speaker's own action, working as a way to place oneself on stage. Typically meitsi works as an index of performance. The adolescents use it when they refer to their on-going action, or something they are just about to do, in situations in which they wish to get the others' attention to their action (e.g. in a Play Station rally game: meitsi ohittaa ton auton nyt 'meitsi passes that car now'; or in a billiard game: kato meitsi pussittaa täs palloi 'look, meitsi bugs up the balls here'). However, besides working as a way to place one's action on stage, meitsi is also used as a way to place one's identity on stage. By referring to himself with meitsi when describing his action, the speaker may indicate that he is not describing just some occasional action, but one which is characteristic of him, part of his identity.

By combining the perspectives of conversation analysis (see e.g. Heritage 1984, Sacks 1992) and interactional sociolinguistics (e.g. Auer 2007, Eckert 2008; see also Agha 2007) the paper explores the different types of meanings invoked by the use of meitsi in interactions among adolescents. It discusses how the use of meitsi as an index of performance and as a way to display the relevance of one's identity are intertwined. The paper is based on my study on language practices of adolescents in Eastern Helsinki. The data have been collected in a youth club, where I spent time as a voluntary worker. They consist of audio recordings and field notes. The adolescents participating in the study are from 13 to 18 years old, mainly boys, and they have heterogeneous ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

References:

Agha, Asif 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge University Press.

Auer, Peter 2007 (ed.). Style and Social Identities. Alternative Approaches to Linguistic heterogeneity. Mouton de Gruyter.

Eckert, Penelope 2008. Variation and the indexical field. – Journal of Sociolinguistics 12/4.

Heritage, John 1984. Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Polity Press.

Sacks, Harvey 1992. Lectures on conversation. Edited by Gail Jefferson. Basil Blackwell.