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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 721

Part of Session 155: Changing linguistic norms in the audiovisual media (Other abstracts in this session)

Processes of standardization through the media in minority languages: Swedish in Finland

Authors: Stenberg-Sirén, Jenny; Östman, Jan-Ola I
Submitted by: Östman, Jan-Ola I (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Studies on ideologies of language standards (Kristiansen 2001, Mattheier 1997, Kristiansen & Coupland 2011) indicate that although e.g. in Denmark late modern notions of globalization and democratization are at work, the ideologies of a standard language remain strong while the standard itself is changing. We ask whether a similar change is taking place in minority languages. For minority-language speakers broadcasts in their own language on TV and the radio are typically their only oral authorities; this is so in Finland where Swedish is a minority national language. We focus on the role of audiovisual media in Swedish-language Finland.

The national public service broadcasting company YLE has two Swedish-language radio channels and one TV-channel aimed at Swedish speakers. In 2010 about 99% of the Swedish speaking population listened to or watched Swedish-language programs (www.yle.fi). Any change in the language of the YLE media can therefore be presumed to have a major impact on the listeners’ and viewers’ conception of what the standard of spoken Finland-Swedish is like.

We investigate changes in the audiovisual media language in Swedish-language Finland during the last 40 years (1970-2010) by focusing on a set of 40 phonological features (e.g., reductions, assimilations, vowel quality) of reporters and interviewees in news reports and of hosts and participants in entertainment programs. The material consists of one program per genre and medium from each year, 164 programs in total. The sociolinguistic variables we look at are formality, acceptance of regional features, and influence from Finnish. We compare news programs with entertainment programs, radio with television, journalists’ language with that of interviewees and news hosts, and spontaneous speech with texts read out loud.

We find that language in the audiovisual media has become more informal, but the change is mostly due to changes in program formats with a general increase in entertainment features. News reporters’ language is still extremely conservative and formal, very clearly pronounced. The informalization in the news is coupled with an increase in live elements, as in live reports and studio discussions; these, in turn, display the change in the role of the media in late modernity. In entertainment programs the linguistic changes are more noticeable due to live broadcasts with listener participation. The recent more positive attitudes to regional varieties in the media are not directly reflected in the amount of dialectal features heard in the Swedish-language audiovisual media. In entertainment programs regional varieties are as such acceptable, but hardly any local dialects are heard. In the news, what used to be the standard in the media (with influences from the high-status Helsinki variety) is giving way to a more neutral standard, which lacks regional features.

This change has taken place due to increasing pressure from the majority language Finnish, and due to the great variety found in the local dialects of Swedish in Finland. These factors have caused a need for a neutral standard language, which comes close to a reading-of-the-writing variety (cf. Auer 2005, Östman & Mattfolk 2011).