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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 963

Part of Session 158: Language biographies and migration experiences in urban contexts (Other abstracts in this session)

Rural people and the big city – Ingrian Finns’ autobiographic stories about language use in the St. Petersburg area

Authors: Mononen, Kaarina (1); Pöyhönen, Sari (2)
Submitted by: Mononen, Kaarina Lea Hannele (University of Helsinki, Finland)

This paper discusses personal experiences about a rapidly altered linguistic situation in a city, St. Petersburg and its surroundings, as narrated by Ingrian Finns of two generations. We will illustrate how personal stories on language use can be seen as explaining the linguistic challenges and choices the Ingrian Finnish informants have met and made during their life time. By analysing both the sociohistorical context and content of stories as well as linguistic interaction it is possible to understand the present day positions of the informants (cf. Pavlenko 2007). 

Ingrian Finns constitute an old migrant group from Finland in the area around the contemporary St. Petersburg (Leningrad Region). Finnish-speaking population started moving to the area from 1617 onward until the 1930s, when about 50 000 people were transported to Siberia and Central Asia. After Stalin’s death, many Ingrian Finns moved back to the area. St. Petersburg, established in 1703, has always had a great impact on the history of Ingrian Finns and their personal experiences in various settings: education, religion, work and cultural contacts with Russians and other ethnic groups.

Our paper is based on two ethnographic studies, conducted among Ingrian Finns in St. Petersburg in the late 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s in two settings: an old people’s home and a school specialised in the Finnish language. The data consist of interviews, free conversations, written autobiographies, and field notes. In the first setting, the informants are four women who were born in the early 1900s to 1920s. They represent the first generation of Ingrian Finns, who were born in a rural area in the “Finnish villages” around St. Petersburg, went to Finnish school, and practiced the Lutheran religion but experienced great societal changes and later some of them went to work in Leningrad. In the second setting the informants are teachers of Finnish, born in 1930s to 1960s and represent the second generation of Ingrian Finns. They have also experienced life in the villages but lived most of their life in the big city, and moved back and forth in the Soviet Union. This migration has also caused language loss for most of them. Both groups have had personal experiences of forced transportation and oppression as well as the ethnic and linguistic revival in the late 1980s.

In this presentation we will discuss the following questions: How do the changes in linguistic environment come out in interviews and conversations, and in written autobiographies? What are the main differences in autobiographic narratives between the older and the younger generation in respect to language maintenance and loss?

Reference:

Pavlenko, A. 2007. Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 28 (2), 163–188.