UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND PHILOSOPHICAL FACULTY
SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES English language and translation
Meri Pirita Koskinen
“ENSIN KUITTASIN IDEAN IHAN BULLSHITTINÄ, MUTTA SITTEN ALOIN MIETTIÄ, ETTÄ MIKSIPÄ EI?”
English Influences in Finnish Women’s Magazines Cosmopolitan and Trendi
MA Thesis
May 2018
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Philosophical Faculty Osasto – School
School of Humanities Tekijät – Author
Meri Pirita Koskinen Työn nimi – Title
“Ensin kuittasin idean ihan bullshittinä, mutta sitten aloin miettiä, että miksipä ei?” English Influences in Finnish Women’s Magazines Cosmopolitan and Trendi
Pääaine – Major Työn laji – Level Päivämäärä –
Date Sivumäärä – Number of pages
English Language and Translation
Pro gradu -tutkielma x
3.5.2018 78 pages + Appendices Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin tutkielma Aineopintojen tutkielma Tiivistelmä – Abstract
This study investigates the English influences on Finnish language in the context of two Finnish women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan and Trendi. More specifically, the aim is to analyze three direct loan influences: direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches. This study examines both the quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of these categories.
English influences on other languages are often called anglicisms (e.g. Görlach 2003: 1; Gottlieb 2006: 198–
199; Onysko 2007: 10; Sajavaara 1989: 84). Different scholars define anglicisms in various ways, but nevertheless they are such a wide phenomenon (Gottlieb 2006: 199) that I decided to narrow the studied elements to direct loan influences (Onysko 2007: 13). The deciding criteria of the three categories, direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches, is composed by me on the basis of numerous scholars, such as Myers-Scotton (1993, 2006), Poplack (2017), Onysko (2007), Callahan (2004), McClure (1998) and Gottlieb (2006) to name a few. Hybrids were further divided into direct loan hybrids and codeswitch hybrids depending on the influence type visible in them.
The two magazines, Cosmopolitan and Trendi, were selected as the material of this study in order to compare translated articles and articles that are originally written in Finnish. Cosmopolitan is an international magazine that features often English-speaking celebrities in its main articles, whereas Trendi is originally a Finnish magazine and the interviewees of its articles are well-known Finns.
The analysis of the direct loan influences in these magazines revealed 267 instances of direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches in Cosmopolitan and 151 instances in Trendi. In Cosmopolitan’s case 128 of the instances were direct loans, 63 direct loan hybrids, 49 codeswitch hybrids and 27 codeswitches, while the corresponding numbers in Trendi were 95, 39, 8 and 9, respectively. Hence, the translated articles included clearly more of English influences, yet influences were visible in the articles originally written in Finnish as well. Additionally, it became clear in the analysis that the content of the articles had a significant effect on the number and type of direct loan influences. Nevertheless, since all of the direct loan influences were visible in both magazines, it is clear that English has had and continues to have a significant influence on Finnish texts through its writers and readers at least in the context of magazines.
Avainsanat – Keywords
Language contact, Anglicism, Borrowing, Codeswitching, Magazines
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Filosofinen tiedekunta Osasto – School
Humanistinen osasto Tekijät – Author
Meri Pirita Koskinen Työn nimi – Title
“Ensin kuittasin idean ihan bullshittinä, mutta sitten aloin miettiä, että miksipä ei?” English Influences in Finnish Women’s Magazines Cosmopolitan and Trendi
Pääaine – Major Työn laji – Level Päivämäärä –
Date Sivumäärä – Number of pages
Englannin kieli ja kääntäminen
Pro gradu -tutkielma x
3.5.2018 78 sivua + Liitteet Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin tutkielma Aineopintojen tutkielma Tiivistelmä – Abstract
Tämä tutkimus tarkastelee englannin vaikutusta suomen kieleen kahden suomalaisen naistenlehden,
Cosmopolitanin ja Trendin, kontekstissa. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on analysoida kolmea suoraa lainavaikutusta (direct loan influences): suoria lainoja, hybrideitä ja koodinvaihtoja. Tämä tutkimus tarkastelee näiden kategorioiden kvantitatiivisia sekä kvalitatiivisia puolia.
Englannin vaikutuksia toisissa kielissä kutsutaan usein anglismeiksi (ks. esim. Görlach 2003: 1; Gottlieb 2006:
198–199; Onysko 2007: 10; Sajavaara 1989: 84). Eri tutkijat määrittelevät anglismit monella eri tavalla, mutta ne ovat joka tapauksessa niin laaja ilmiö (Gottlieb 2006: 199), että päätin rajata tutkittavat ilmiöt suoriin lainavaikutuksiin (Onysko 2007: 13). Olen koonnut tutkittavien kategorioiden, eli suorien lainojen, hybridien ja koodinvaihtojen, kriteerit itse, pohjautuen lukuisten tutkijoiden näkemyksiin. Hyödyntämiäni tutkijoita ovat muun muassa Myers-Scotton (1993, 2006), Poplack (2017), Onysko (2007), Callahan (2004), McClure (1998) ja Gottlieb (2006) muutaman mainitakseni. Hybridit jaoin vielä suoralainahybrideihin (direct loan hybrids) ja koodinvaihtohybrideihin (codeswitch hybrids) perustuen siihen, mikä vaikutustyyppi niissä oli nähtävissä.
Valitsin nämä kaksi lehteä, Cosmopolitanin ja Trendin, tutkimuksen materiaaliksi, jotta pystyin vertailemaan käännettyjä artikkeleita ja alun perin suomeksi kirjoitettuja artikkeleita. Cosmopolitan on kansainvälinen aikakauslehti, joka haastattelee englanninkielisiä julkisuuden henkilöitä sen pääartikkelissa, kun taas Trendi on alun perin suomalainen aikakauslehti, jonka haastateltavat ovat tunnettuja suomalaisia.
Suorien lainavaikutusten analyysi paljasti Cosmopolitanista yhteensä 267 tapausta suoria lainoja, hybridejä ja koodinvaihtoja ja Trendistä 151 tapausta. Cosmopolitanissa 128 tapauksista oli suoria lainoja, 63
suoralainahybridejä, 49 koodinvaihtohybridejä ja 27 koodinvaihtoa, kun taas Trendissä samat luvut olivat 95, 39, 8 ja 9. Käännetyt artikkelit sisälsivät siis selvästi enemmän englannin vaikutuksia, mutta englannin vaikutukset olivat näkyvissä myös alun perin suomeksi kirjoitetuissa artikkeleissa. Lisäksi analyysissa kävi ilmi, että
artikkelin sisällöllä oli merkittävä vaikutus suorien lainavaikutusten määrään ja laatuun. Joka tapauksessa, koska kaikki suorat lainavaikutukset olivat nähtävillä molemmissa lehdissä, on selvää, että englannilla on ollut ja on edelleen merkittävä vaikutus suomenkielisiin teksteihin niiden kirjoittajien ja lukijoiden välityksellä, ainakin aikakauslehtien kontekstissa.
Avainsanat – Keywords
kielikontakti, anglismi, lainaaminen, koodinvaihto, aikakauslehdet
Contents
1 Introduction ... 1
2 Language influences ... 4
2.1 Language contact ... 4
2.2 Borrowing ... 8
2.2.1 Hybrids ... 13
2.2.2 Reasons for borrowing ... 15
2.3 Codeswitches ... 19
2.3.1 Reasons for codeswitching ... 23
2.3.2 Flagging ... 25
2.4 Distinguishing between codeswitching and borrowing ... 28
3. Material and methods ... 31
3.1 Material ... 31
3.2 Collecting the data ... 34
3.3 Analyzing the data ... 36
4 Analysis ... 39
4.1. Quantitative analysis ... 39
4.2 Qualitative analysis of direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches ... 52
4.2.1 Codeswitches ... 52
4.2.2 Hybrids ... 58
4.2.3 Direct loans ... 62
5 Discussion and conclusion ... 68
References ... 73
Appendix 1: Instances in Cosmopolitan magazine ... 79
Appendix 2: Instances in Trendi magazine ... 82
1 Introduction
In this MA thesis I will study the influences English has on Finnish in the context of two women’s magazines, Cosmopolitan and Trendi. More specifically, I will focus on direct loan influences and analyze direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches from the material.
There have been on-going discussions about the state of Finnish language and the possible effect foreign languages have on it. This is not a new topic, as the Finnish national poet, Eino Leino, was also worried about the impact Russian and Swedish might have on the small Finnish circa 100 years ago (Dufva 1992: 79). Another national hero, Elias Lönnrot, did not want to borrow lexicon from other languages; instead he preferred indigenous words from different dialects as well as neologisms coined with Finnish elements (Häkkinen 2018).
In recent years the terrifying interferer that might alter, or even kill, the Finnish language is considered to be English (Dufva 1992: 80; Hiidenmaa 2003: 54–102; Leppänen & Nikula 2008:
9–10). English is the most used linqua franca in the world and it is also taking over different kinds of platforms in Finland, for example commercials, fashion, entertainment, technology, and science (Hiidenmaa 2003: 74; Aijmer & Melchers 2004: 1).
English effects on other languages are often called anglicisms (see e.g. Gottlieb 2006: 198–199;
Onysko 2007: 10; Sajavaara 1989: 84) Anglicisms can be anything from more extensive influences on the text type or style to a particular word order or form choices (Gottlieb 2006:
198–199). Since the scope of this thesis is limited, the focus is on anglicisms on the lexical level. However, anglicisms can vary on the lexical level as well. Lexical anglicisms can vary from direct loan words to calques, hybrids, or even abbreviations and acronyms (Sajavaara 1989: 85–86; Onysko 2007: 13–34). With the scope of this study in mind, I decided to focus on direct loan influences (Onysko 2007: 13), more specifically on direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches. All of these influence types are formed by transferring a word or an expression from English to Finnish and, depending on the type, either adapting the word or expression into Finnish or keeping it in its original form. One reason for this decision was that all threeabove- mentioned direct loan influence types represent the effects of English in the most apparent way, since all of them manifest also the external appearance of English words in their form and hence are somewhat easier to detect than other types of anglicisms.
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Since the topic is widely discussed, there is a vast range of studies concerning the effect English has on the Finnish language in different platforms, such as advertisements, novels and spoken language (Paakkinen 2008; Seitamäki 2013; Lauttamus 1990; Leppänen et al. 2008). So far, journalistic texts in popular magazines have not been in the focus of studies considering this topic in Finland and that is why I have chosen to examine them.
As a translator, I am most interested to see whether there are any differences in the effects of English in translated articles and in articles originally written in Finnish. That is why I chose to study two different magazines: Cosmopolitan and Trendi. The former is an international women’s magazine, which issues in various countries in addition to Finland. Cosmopolitan comes from the United States, and the magazine’s main article, which is always an interview of a well-known person, is usually about an English-speaking celebrity. This means that the original text of the article has most likely been written in English and at least parts of the articles in the Finnish issues have then been translated into Finnish. By contrast, Trendi has Finnish origins and the main article, an interview of a well-known figure, is almost always about a Finn.
Moreover, the text is originally written in Finnish.
In general, magazines form a large portion of what people read in Finland and they are quite popular (KMT 2017). Therefore, magazines can be seen as a representation of the language used in modern Finland but, at the same time, they also modify and reinforce the current state of language. Since both Trendi and Cosmopolitan are women’s magazines, and both are read by relatively young women, this study may give an idea of what type of language young women in Finland read and possibly use as well (Trendi 2018a; Cosmopolitan 2018).
In addition to examining the quantitative aspect of the direct loans, hybrids and codeswitches in both magazines, in other words, counting the instances, I will analyze the context the instances are in. I will ponder on the reasons the English influences are used instead of the possible indigenous Finnish expressions. Additionally, I will try to note whether the effects of English are connected to new and foreign phenomena which do not necessarily have Finnish terminology yet, or whether the English-effects are used more as rhetorical devices.
Furthermore, I examine the variance between translated and untranslated articles in this context.
Thus, my research questions are:
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1. Do magazine articles that are originally written in Finnish differ from translated articles in the visible influences of English in their lexicon?
2. Is there a difference in the type of English influence in magazine articles that are originally written in Finnish and articles that are translated from English?
3. Are the English influences visible in similar contexts in translated and untranslated articles?
In order to answer the first two questions, I will carry out quantitative analysis on the direct loan, hybrid and codeswitch instances of my material. The third question is more qualitative in nature and therefore I will conduct qualitative analysis on the instances as well. I will investigate the general tendencies of each category and the contexts they are in and pick examples from the data. Additionally, I will note the instances deviating from the norm and discuss several examples of each category in more detail. Furthermore, in addition to answering these research questions, I will also observe the differences of the English influences in the translated and untranslated articles in a larger scale and note the possible motives affecting them in the analysis.
In this thesis, the next chapter is dedicated to presenting the theoretical background of this subject. I will first introduce theories and literature concerning language contact in general, as it is the umbrella concept of the instances studied here. Next, I will turn my focus on borrowing and try to define the terms direct loan and hybrid. After that I will do the same with codeswitches. At the end of the second chapter I will also compare borrowings and codeswitches, since they are intertwined. In the third chapter of this thesis I will introduce the study material and methods and then move on to the analysis in the fourth chapter. The quantitative analysis is presented first and after that I move on to the qualitative part of the analysis. In the fifth and final chapter I will discuss the results of my analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, and ponder on the results in a larger scale. Additionally, in the last chapter, conclusions are drawn and ideas for future researched presented.
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2 Language influences
This chapter is dedicated to discussing language contact and the influences and effects languages have on one another. This study is focused on the influences English has on Finnish, more specifically in the context of two women’s magazines, and hence it is important to first discuss the influences languages have on one another and especially focus on the influences English has on Finnish. First, I will discuss the effects languages have had and continue to have on one another and later I will focus more on the two language effects most relevant to my study: borrowing and codeswitching. I will try to enlighten the research conducted considering these phenomena and introduce the concepts relevant to them. At the same time, I will define the terminology used in this study.
I start by discussing language contact in general and after that I will move on to borrowing.
While discussing borrowing, I will define the terms direct loan and hybrid used in this study.
After that I move on to presenting theories and defining terminology on codeswitching. Lastly, in this chapter I will compare and contrast borrowing and codeswitching.
2.1 Language contact
In this chapter I will describe the effects languages have on each other. The main focus of this thesis is on the effects English has on Finnish. Throughout the chapter I will also define the different concepts and terms connected to the topic.
Languages do not exist in a vacuum; they are constantly changing and changed by the numerous speakers of each language. Languages are in contact with one another because people, the speakers, are in contact, either personally or impersonally, for example through media (Gottlieb 2006: 203; Sajavaara 1989: 65). Finnish is no exception; various languages, from close and afar, have had an influence on it. Joki (1989: 7–10) describes how the Finnish language developed from the parent language spoken in the Ural region circa 4,000 BC. After that it has been affected by numerous Indo-European languages, such as German, French and Baltic languages (Joki 1989). Since, according to Mauranen and Jantunen (2005: 7), the Finnish written language was mainly developed through translations from various languages, the influence of other languages on Finnish, especially written Finnish, is indisputable.
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Languages can influence one another’s morphology, syntax, style, and pragmatics, but the most eminent ways languages influence each other is through their lexicon (Görlach 2002: 3). In other words, languages tend to borrow lexicon from other languages. As Gottlieb (2006: 199) notes, however, ‘borrowing’ is quite a misleading term, as it does not mean that languages would use a word or an expression, maybe adapt it, and then give it back to where it came from.
Borrowing and loan words are the established terms, and I will naturally use them in this thesis, but a more descriptive term would be the neologism ‘import word’ that Gottlieb (ibid.) mentions.
Throughout its history, Finnish has borrowed words from Latin, German, Swedish, Russian, Norwegian, French, Greek and many other Indo-European languages as well as other languages in the Uralic language family which Finnish belongs to (Joki 1989; Sajavaara 1989). In fact, Sajavaara (1989: 64) mentions that Finnish language is estimated to have borrowed at least a fifth of its lexicon. At the same time, she notes that the number is most likely to be even higher when specialized fields and their lexicons are taken into consideration. In fact, the most recent estimates state that almost half of the Finnish lexicon would be borrowed (Häkkinen 2018).
Yet, other scholars note that compared to many other languages, Finnish has retained quite a high proportion of indigenous vocabulary (Battarbee 2002: 262; Joki 1989: 12).
Even though English itself has been influenced by several other languages, it is today more known as the linguistic donor (Gottlieb 2006: 196). The spread of English is often described by three circles: the inner circle, outer circle and expanding circle (Kachru 1985: 12). The inner circle represents countries that have English as their mother tongue (Britain, USA, Australia), the outer circle the countries colonized by Britain where English is institutionalized (India, Singapore, Zambia), and the expanding circle the countries where English is considered the first foreign language (countries of Europe, Japan, China) (Kachru 1985 12–13; Kachru &
Nelson 2006: 10). In the traditional view, Finland is naturally situated in the expanding circle.
Yet, especially in recent years and with the significance of English in the EU, some scholars have speculated that these divisions might be changing. For example, Hilgendorf (2007: 145) discusses the role of English in German context and notes that Germany is moving towards the outer circle, if not already in it. This might well be the case with Finland too, as the use of English has spread to several domains in Finland too, such as advertisement, science, media, entertainment, fashion, business and trade (Aijmer & Melchers 2004: 1).
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According to Görlach (2002: 3), in the last century there has been two periods of mass impact of English on many European languages, including Finnish: after the Second World War and from 1990 onwards. Thus, even though Finnish has borrowed lexicon from various languages, English is becoming a more and more dominant donor language of newer loan words (Dufva 1992: 80; Hiidenmaa 2003: 54–102; Leppänen & Nikula 2008: 9–10). This influence of English on Finnish is on the focus of my study.
The effects of English on other languages are often called anglicisms (see e.g. Gottlieb 2006:
198–199; Onysko 2007: 10; Sajavaara 1989: 84). Anglicisms are quite difficult to define. For example, Gottlieb (2006: 198) notes that scholars have traditionally defined an anglicism as “a word borrowed from the English language which is adapted with respect to the linguistic system of the receptor language and integrated into it”. Along these lines, one definition is also presented by Görlach (2003: 1):
An anglicism is a word or idiom that is recognizably English in its form (spelling, pronunciation, morphology, or at least one of the three), but is accepted as an item in the vocabulary of the receptor language.
Nevertheless, Görlach (2003: 1–2) himself notes how this definition excludes such categories as fully adapted words that no longer resemble their English origin and codeswitches (see sections 2.2 and 2.3), to mention but a few. In addition, Gottlieb (2006: 198) points out that these types of definitions are rather narrow as they regard only individual lexical items as anglicisms.
Sajavaara (1989) has provided a broader definition. According to her, anglicisms can be defined as “expressions that have spread into international use with the help of English” (Sajavaara 1989: 84). She gives examples of different anglicism types, such as loan words, translation loans, loan meanings, abbreviations, and acronyms (Sajavaara 1989: 85–86). Even though Sajavaara’s (1989: 84) definition includes slightly broader units of language than merely words, it is still focused on the lexical level.
In his aim to cover the entire spectrum of anglicisms, Gottlieb (2006: 198–199) provides the following definition:
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[A]ny individual or systemic language feature adapted or adopted from English, or inspired or boosted by English models, used in intralingual communication in a language other than English.
This definition strives to encompass all language phenomena from microlanguage elements, such as morphemes, lexemes, phraseology, and syntax, to macrolanguage elements including clause, sentence and textual levels (Gottlieb 2006: 199). In addition, this definition includes as anglicisms language elements that are boosted, i.e. made popular, with the help of English. An example of such boosted anglicism would be the word communication (kommunikaatio in Finnish) that is originally derived from the Latin word commūnicāre but has spread into many other languages, including Finnish, with the help of English (Sajavaara 1989: 84).
As Gottlieb includes in his definition also macrolanguage instances, for example text or sentence types and styles that are inspired or boosted by English, he admits that operationalizing those anglicism types can be extremely difficult (Gottlieb 2006: 199). Thus, even though searching and analyzing all instances even remotely inspired by English would be interesting, it would not be practical in the scope of this master’s thesis. Hence, even though I deem the last definition, presented by Gottlieb (2006: 198–199), to be the most accurate description of the spectrum of anglicisms, I cannot study all the phenomena it encompasses. Thus, I have decided to focus on the lexical level of anglicisms, which is the level, as mentioned above, many scholars view as the key level of anglicisms (Gottlieb 2006: 198; Sajavaara 1989: 84; Görlach 2003: 1–2).
Since the lexical level anglicisms can be rather diverse as well, I decided to narrow the anglicism types I studied even further. One of the anglicism types I chose to study is borrowing, because it is said to be one of the most common principles languages influence one another (Görlach 2002: 3). Borrowings are more closely discussed in the next section. Another anglicism type I decided to examine is codeswitches. The reason for this decision is that codeswitches are, in essence, the use of English in the midst of Finnish (see e.g. Myers-Scotton 1993, 2006; Poplack 2017; Onysko 2007), which makes them quite discernible and, as such, clear indications of English influence. Codeswitches are discussed in more detail in section 2.3.
The third type of anglicisms studied in this thesis is hybrids, which are intertwined with the two other types; they are compounds that combine the use of English (codeswitch) or an English-
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origin loan to a fully Finnish word or an expression. Hybrids are reviewed and defined more closely in section 2.2.1.
2.2 Borrowing
In this section I will introduce the phenomenon of borrowing in a larger scale. At the same time, I will define the terminology used in this thesis.
As mentioned in section 2.1, borrowing is one of the most general ways languages influence one another (Görlach 2002: 3). Borrowing lexicon from others is one way for languages to acquire lexicon (Sajavaara 1989: 64). Whereas borrowing is often used to signify the process of transferring or incorporating lexical items from one language to another (Poplack 2017: 6), the term loan word is used for the product of the borrowing process (Poplack 2017: 7; Broselow 2006: 286). Often the language where the loan is from is called a donor language or a source language (Poplack 2017: 6; Myers-Scotton 2006: 211; Onysko 2007: 14). Similarly, the language acquiring the new lexicon is called either a receptor language (Onysko 2007: 14) or a recipient language (Poplack 2017: 6; Myers-Scotton 2006: 211). I will use all these terms interchangeably, or the names of the languages that play these roles in my thesis, English and Finnish, respectively.
Sometimes new lexical items are incorporated into the receptor language through other means than just adopting and adapting the word. For example, a donor language word can be partly or fully translated in order to create a new word into the receptor language. Translated donor language elements in the receptor language are called loan translations, or calques, and they belong in the category called indirect loan influences (Onysko 2007: 12–14). Figure 1 presents one possible classification of different types of loan influences that can occur in a borrowing situation.
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Figure 1. Direct and indirect loan influences (Onysko 2007: 13).
As Figure 1 shows, when borrowing from another language, the influence of the language can be either direct or indirect. In direct loan influence both the word form and at least one meaning of the word are transferred from source language into the receptor language. For example, Finnish words like televisio ‘television’, radio ‘radio’ and traktori ‘tractor’ are transferred from English to Finnish with both their form and meaning, even though the form is adapted to fit Finnish better morphologically and phonetically. On the other hand, in indirect loan influence the form is not transferred. Onysko (2007: 26) provides an example of loan translation from English in German: the English word bottleneck is transferred and translated in German as Flashchenhals (‘bottle + neck’). The meaning is transferred and the word remains a compound word in German as well, but the morphological and phonological forms of the English and German words do not resemble each other.
Another example of indirect loan influence is loan meaning. An illustration would be the Finnish word hiiri that is used with computers and is the equivalent of the English word mouse.
The semantic value of the word mouse, a device used with a computer in order to perform certain operations with the computer, is transferred into Finnish word hiiri, in addition to the semantic value of mouse the animal, following the English model in that respect. Loan meaning was present in my data as well. There were words like baari and media that borrowed their form originally from Swedish and Latin, respectively, but one aspect of their meaning was emphasized and spread with the help of English and its respective words bar and media.
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The indirect loan influences loan rendition and loan creation go even further, as the former is formed with the help of the donor language model but entirely with receptor language elements and the latter is created to refer to a foreign subject without formally relating to the foreign word at all (Onysko 2007: 29–30). Hakulinen (1969: 14) gives examples of the two on the basis of Betz (1949): the German Vaterland deriving from Latin patria is a loan rendition and the German Umwelt deriving from French milieu is a loan creation. Hakulinen (1969: 14) gives also a Finnish example of loan creation; according to him the Finnish word sähkö is a loan creation deriving from Swedish elektricitet. It is debatable how much loan creations have actually to do with borrowing since they are formed with entirely indigenous elements. In fact, Hakulinen (ibid.) refers to loan creation also as a neologism.
Especially the indirect loan influences have been discussed widely and scholars do not always agree on all of the definitions (see i.e. Nuutinen 1989; Koivisto 2013). Nevertheless, the variety of indirect loan influences and the diverse ways in which they can be formed make them too wide a group to consider in the scope of this thesis. In addition, Onysko (2007: 14) himself notes that indirect loan influences can be difficult to discern especially on the level of word form. Therefore, taking the scope of this master’s thesis into consideration, I decided to focus only on the direct loan influences in this study, which are easier to discern and observe. Hence, indirect loan influences are not discussed further in this thesis.
As shown in Figure 1, direct loan influences, loan words, are divided into foreign words and assimilated loan words. Foreign words are, like the name suggest, words that are foreign, taken from donor language’s lexicon rather than receptor language’s, and not assimilated into the receptor language in any way. In other words, in the context of this thesis they are the use of English in the midst of Finnish. Thus, in this thesis, foreign words are considered as codeswitches and they are not limited to words since they can be longer phrases as well.
Codeswitches are further discussed in section 2.3. On the other hand, assimilated loan words, which are generally called loan words or direct loans in this thesis, can be divided further (Koivisto 2013: 202; Sajavaara 1989: 96–97; Onysko 2007: 38–41). Figure 2 presents this division.
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Figure 2. Division of assimilated loan words compiled on the basis of Sajavaara (1989: 96–
97).
These three types of loan words are the stages of assimilation when lexicon is borrowed from another language. All three stages include different amounts of morphological and phonological assimilation of the source language word into the receptor language (Sajavaara 1989: 96–97).
On the other hand, Onysko (2007: 38–40) divides loan words similarly into three stages of assimilation based on either phonetic assimilation, morphological assimilation, or both orthographical and morphological assimilation. The stages are called free transphonemisation, partial transphonemisation and zero transphonemisation, which are the stages of phonetic assimilation; transmorphemisation, compromise transmorphemisation and zero transmorphemisation, which are the stages of morphological assimilation; and integrated loanword, partially integrated loanword and transferred loanword, which are the stages of orthographical and morphological assimilation (Onysko 2007: 38–40). However, other scholars (e.g. Poplack 2017: 50–58; Myers-Scotton 2006: 219–226) notice that borrowing often includes integration of the donor language word into the recipient language but they do not specify on the different stages of integration. Sajavaara (1989: 96) also notes that loan words can be divided into these groups on the basis of their frequency in the language use; for example Finnish common words like radio ‘radio’ and prosentti ‘percentage’ that include foreign phonemes (the consonant d and consonant cluster pr in the beginning of a word) could be seen as general loans regardless, since they are so common in Finnish. For the sake of clarity, I will utilize the (translated) terminology of Sajavaara (1989: 96–97), especially as she is specifically discussing loan words in Finnish, which are my focus as well.
Of the three stages of assimilation, general loans are the most assimilated loans. They resemble the recipient language in their phonology and morphology, and they are frequently used
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(Sajavaara 1989: 96). Examples of general loans borrowed from English into Finnish would be words like poni ‘pony’, taksi ‘taxi’ and ralli ‘rally’ (Tieteen termipankki 2018).
On the other hand, specialized loans are only partially assimilated into the recipient language, as they still have some foreign phonemes which clearly indicate their foreign origins. According to Sajavaara (1989: 96–97), unlike the two examples earlier, radio and prosentti, that also had foreign phonemes but were deemed as general loans, specialized loans are quite rare. Examples of specialized loans are filosofia ‘philosophy’ and stressi ‘stress’ (Tieteen termipankki 2018).
Citation loans are the least assimilated group. Sajavaara (1989: 97) notes that theoretically citation loans are directly transferred into the recipient language without any assimilation but, in reality, the phonology of these words often adjusts into the receptor language. Finnish examples of transferred loanwords would be freelancer and bonus (Tieteen termipankki 2018).
As they are written exactly the same in English as they are in Finnish, they are not assimilated into Finnish in their form, yet especially bonus is somewhat phonetically adapted.
Koivisto (2013: 202) argues that these three stages also indicate the age of the loan word; i.e.
when the word is first borrowed, it is usually transferred directly without particular assimilation and, as the loan becomes more and more accepted and established, it might adapt more to the receptor language. Naturally, this is not the case with all loan words, for example the words filosofi ‘philosopher’ and profeetta ‘prophet’ in Finnish still include foreign phonemes, even though they were first mentioned in works of Agricola in the 16th century (Häkkinen 2009: 15).
As one can probably deduce at this point, dividing loan words into these three categories, general loans, specialized loans and citation loans, is not always simple or clear-cut, and as mentioned, some scholars do not make such divisions (e.g. Poplack 2017; Myers-Scotton 2006). Loan words can change and adapt over time and change group. Especially frequency as an indicator is tricky, as words can suddenly become popular and later be forgotten and not used as often. For example, according to Sajavaara (1989: 96–97), loan words radio and prosentti are general loans because of their frequency, but instances like alkoholi, mikrofoni and sosiaalinen are specialized loans and, as such, not as frequent. Yet, the frequency of these words is very much dependent on the contexts. For example, in my data of Cosmopolitan, there were no instances of the word radio but one instance of alkoholi and one instance of sosiaalinen. Hence, the division between the categories of assimilation is not clear and in this
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thesis I collect and analyze all direct loans, assimilated or not, and do not divide them into any further categories.
Seitamäki (2013: 12) divides direct loans in another way, as she uses categories called unadapted loans and adapted loans. In the former category she includes only ‘naked forms’ of loan words, i.e. words that have not been inflected or otherwise integrated into the receptor language. In other words, they are uninflected citation loans. Seitamäki (2013: 44) mentions examples of unadapted loans from her data, media, sorry and freelancer, to name a few. In contrast, adapted loans are loan words that have been somehow integrated into the receptor language, such as linkki ‘link’, klooni ‘clone’ and vegaani ‘vegan’, as well as citation loans that happen to be inflected, such as median ‘media + GEN’ and freelanceria ‘freelancer + partitive case’ (Seitamäki 2013: 44–45).
Similarly to the three stages of assimilation, I decided not to categorize the direct loans of my data into unadapted and adapted loan words either. One reason is that, even though Seitamäki used an entire book, Miehet, jotka vihaavat naisia, as her data, she only found 16 instances of unadapted loans (Seitamäki 2013: 44). One can imagine that there would be significantly less of those instances in this study as my study material is much smaller. Moreover, my study is leaning more towards qualitative research and I plan to analyze the instances more individually than by categorizing them. Anyhow, if they happen to be relevant to some of the instances I analyze, I might use these terms of adapted and unadapted loans as defined by Seitamäki (2013:
12) and introduced above.
2.2.1 Hybrids
As was explained before, in this thesis direct loan influences from English to Finnish are the focus. More specifically, the three aspects of direct loan influences are analyzed: codeswitches (marked as foreign words in Figure 1), direct loans and hybrids. Codeswitches are, in this case, the use of English in otherwise Finnish text. They are explained more closely in section 2.3.
Direct loans that are analyzed here are all loan words borrowed from English, independent of whether they are general loans, specialized loans or citation loans. Next, I will introduce and define the term hybrid I utilize in this study.
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There are many different definitions for hybrids as the term is used widely across research fields. The same term can have different meanings in, for example, biology and geography than in linguistics. In addition to obvious field differences, hybrids in linguistics can be understood either on textual level or on word level. Paloposki (2005: 18–19) notes the hybridity of translations in the early years of Finnish written language: texts were often translated from multiple source texts and the translators adapted the original texts remarkably into the Finnish context. Therefore, the translations on the textual level were rather hybrids than ‘pure’
translations or ‘pure’ original texts.
On the other hand, on the word level, hybrids can be defined in another way. One quite interesting notion of hybridity is made by Battarbee (2002: 269). He mentions a mixed pronunciation of an anglicism as a hybrid. He gives an example of the anglicism in Finnish, gentleman, which, according to him, is pronounced by adapting the English pronunciation of the initial [ts] but the middle section [tle] is pronounced like the spelling, which is typical for Finnish pronunciation.
As my data is in written form, definitions that are based on the pronunciation cannot be dominating definitions, even though pronunciation can be something to ponder on in the analysis. Other scholars define hybrids on word level in other ways, relying more on the form of the words. For example, Gottlieb (2006: 199) regards hybrids as partial loan translations. In his example, the German word Computerkunst, one part of the compound word is a direct loan (Computer < English computer) and the other is a loan translation, or a calque (kunst < English art). As mentioned, I will not focus on indirect loan influences in this thesis, and hence I will not take into consideration hybrids that are formed with indirect loan influences, such as loan translations. In other words, in this thesis, hybrids are analyzed only if one part of the compound is a direct loan influence. As the other part of Gottlieb’s example above is in fact a direct loan (German Computer < English computer), it would be considered a hybrid in my study as well, and further analyzed.
Onysko (2007: 55) discusses anglicisms in German and he provides a definition of hybrids in German context:
Hybrid anglicisms (hybrids) are based on a combination of English borrowings with German elements.
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In this thesis, however, the other elements beside English are, of course, Finnish. German in Onysko’s (2007: 55) definition and Finnish in this thesis can be seen as the receptor language and English as the donor or source language (Poplack 2017: 6; Myers-Scotton 2006: 211;
Onysko 2007: 14) introduced in the beginning of section 2.2. Even though the word elements in the definition presented above could be interpreted to mean other language elements than merely words, for example affixes, both Onysko (2007: 56) and Gottlieb (2006: 199) view hybrids almost exclusively as compound words. This is the case in this thesis as well. To conclude, in this thesis hybrids are compound words that combine an English-origin word and a word that belongs to the Finnish lexicon.
Neither Gottlieb (2006: 199) nor Onysko (2007: 55–59) mention codeswitches with regard to hybrids. Since I will search and analyze both direct loans and codeswitches from my material, I see no reason to leave compound words that combine a codeswitch and Finnish elements outside of the scope of this study. This decision was further endorsed after I discovered quite a number of compounds that combined a codeswitch, i.e. English words or phrases (see section 2.3), and Finnish elements in my material, such as after work -aika, drag-artisti and badass- asenne.
Since I included as hybrids both compounds that are formed with direct loans and compounds formed with codeswitches, I decided to categorize the hybrids accordingly. Hence, hybrids that combine a direct loan to Finnish elements are called direct loan hybrids and hybrids that combine a codeswitch with Finnish elements are called codeswitch hybrids in this study. In the former category belonged instances such as hittisarja ‘hit series’, which combines the direct loan hitti with the Finnish word sarja. Meanwhile, the instances mentioned above, for example after work -aika ‘after work time’, which combines the codeswitch after work with the Finnish expression aika, belong to codeswitch hybrids.
2.2.2 Reasons for borrowing
As one can see from the previous sections, borrowing is quite a vast phenomenon and it is common in all languages. Next, I will discuss shortly the reasons lexical items are borrowed.
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According to Myers-Scotton (2006: 210–211), borrowing happens almost always from a more prestigious language to a less prestigious one. However, she defines prestige vaguely (Myers- Scotton 2006: 211):
What counts as prestige will vary from one era to another and from one pair of languages to another. [...] [T]he more prestigious language controls more of whatever resource is valued – whether it is political power or socio-economic status or even cachet, a French borrowing into English that we will define [...] as “being more with it” – whatever “it” is.
In this sense, English definitely is the more prestigious language compared to Finnish, as it possesses all three aspects of a more prestigious language; it is used in the global world for international politics as well as economics. Additionally, English has cachet in many areas of life since the anglophone culture has such prominent status in Finland in, for example, media, entertainment, fashion and sports (Aijmer & Melchers 2004: 1).
Myers-Scotton (2006: 212–218) divides loan words into cultural borrowings and core borrowings based on the motivation behind the borrowing. She explains cultural borrowings as words that fill gaps in the recipient language lexicon. In other words, the semantic value of cultural borrowings is often something new that has not been part of the recipient language or culture before. Pahta and Nurmi (2004: 134) mention the concept of culturally bound expressions as well in the context of Finnish language. They explain that these kinds of expressions do not have any established verbalization in Finnish, because they represent phenomena not familiar in Finland. Thus, when the phenomenon is for some reason culturally transferred into Finnish culture, the culturally bound expression or word is transferred into Finnish language as well. Pahta and Nurmi (ibid.) offer examples of culturally bound loans in Finland: happy hour, take away and cheerleader.
On the other hand, core borrowings Myers-Scotton (2006: 215–218) defines to be gratuitous, as they only duplicate elements that recipient language already has in its lexicon. She offers two motivations for such borrowings. First, core borrowings are made by bilinguals who use both the donor language and recipient language. Another motivation is the sheer allure of the donor language and its culture. That is, the prestige of the donor language works as the motivation to borrow words into the recipient language even though they already have indigenous synonyms.
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In my study, the notion of cultural borrowings, core borrowings or culturally bound expressions are not explicitly discussed, as it is not relevant to my study whether a word or an expression is transferred into Finnish due to cultural reasons or something else. Some of the direct loans and codeswitches found in my material most likely are these kinds of culturally bound loans, or cultural borrowings, for example, cheerleader, after work and open mic. Even though it is interesting to ponder on the effects of cultures in the qualitative analysis and I will mention these terms introduced here, I will not categorize the direct loans, nor codeswitches for that matter, into these categories.
In contrast to Myers-Scotton’s (2006: 215–218) rather straightforward view on borrowing based on the prestige of another language, Gottlieb (2006: 196) presents various reasons and motivations for borrowing words. He lists different motivations behind borrowing that are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Reasons for borrowings (Gottlieb 2006: 196)
Background Motivation Function
A. Voids in the language 1. Name new phenomenon Verbalization 2. Generalize/specify Verbalization 3. Express oneself in neutral
terms
Information 4. Express a value statement Expressiveness 5. Create certain associations Persuasion 6. Add humorous effect Entertainment 7. Avoid sounding repetitive Rhetorical appeal 8. Obtain a more handy
expression Ease
9. Express personal or group
identity Psychosocial marker
B. Voids in the
sender/receiver 1. Compensate personal
lexical voids Creating a message 2. Compensate presupposed
voids in the audience
Getting the message across C. Foreign language original 1. Represent a foreign culture
in translation
All above functions
Table 1 that Gottlieb presents is quite extensive, and it clearly strives to cover all instances of borrowed language use. Nevertheless, language users are often so creative that any endeavors
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to categorize motivation behind language use are extremely difficult and would require constant modification and reanalyzing. In addition, many of the motivations presented in Table 1 could be at work simultaneously. Gottlieb (2006: 197) himself notes that it is not easy to judge which motivation(s) might be behind a certain borrowing. Furthermore, Onysko (2007: 37) argues, on the basis of Thomason and Kaufmann (1988) and Thomason (2001), that both “borrowings and codeswitches are triggered by individual socio-psychological reasons of a speaker”. Hence, I will not categorize motivation behind loan words or codeswitches according to this table nor in any other method, but I will utilize some of the terms and concepts in the qualitative analysis where appropriate.
Gottlieb (2006: 197) does recognize three semantic categories of borrowings. Next, I will present them, and short explanations conducted by me based on Gottlieb’s more extensive examples and commentaries as well as other literature:
1. Additions. Borrowed expressions that refer to new phenomena. Much like Myers- Scotton’s (2006: 212) cultural borrowings. A Finnish example could be cheerleader, where the word is borrowed with the new phenomenon.
2. Replacements. A loan word that replaces an existing word or an expression. Gottlieb (2006: 197) gives an example from Danish, where the Danish word for stage fright lampefeber (originally a German loan) is nowadays being replaced by the English loan translation sceneskræk.
3. Differentiators. A borrowing acquires one part of the semantic field of the indigenous word while the indigenous word retains other aspects of meaning and stays in the lexicon.
A Danish example is again given by Gottlieb (2006: 197): the English loan rollemodel
‘role model’, is gaining ground in Danish, while the existing Danish word fordebillede is retaining only metaphorical meaning. Gottlieb (ibid.) notes that sometimes differentiators can later turn into replacements.
Again, these are categories that I will not actively utilize but might consider in the qualitative analysis or in the discussion of this thesis. Nevertheless, these are the three major roles that anglicisms have in the Finnish lexicon. In addition, some of the motivations presented in Table 1 can easily be seen as motivations for codeswitching, as will become clear in the next section where I introduce codeswitches extensively.
19 2.3 Codeswitches
In this section, I will focus on the phenomenon of codeswitching. I will present literature discussing this subject and define the terminology considering it. Codeswitches and codeswitching are a widely researched subject (Myers-Scotton 2006: 239; Poplack 2017: 1;
Callahan 2004: 1). The name, codeswitching, refers to switching between codes, that is, switching between languages. Codeswitching is often viewed as a spoken language phenomenon and there is significantly more research on codeswitching in speech than in written language (e.g. Poplack 1980, 1987, 1988, 1993, 2017; Myers-Scotton 1993, 2006). For example, Myers-Scotton (2006: 239) presents a general definition of codeswitch: “the use of two language varieties in the same conversation”. This definition illustrates how most of the research on codeswitches is focused on spoken language. Hence, the definitions usually regard codeswitches in speech rather than in writing, even though some of the definitions can be transferred to cover written codeswitches as well. Yet, in recent years, scholars have begun to study codeswitches in written form too (e.g. Onysko 2007; Callahan 2004; McClure 1998) and they exploit the definitions of spoken codeswitches as well as modify them to meet the reality of written codeswitches. Next, I will present a few definitions and review them in the light of my study purposes.
Similar to borrowings, codeswitches are also occurrences of linguistic influence between two languages. While in borrowing, the language that is influenced is called the recipient or receptor language and the influencing language is called the donor or source language (see section 2.2), in codeswitching the terminology depends on the scholar. Myers-Scotton (2006: 241–250) has developed a Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model that many others utilize (e.g. Onysko 2007:
36–38; Callahan 2004). In this model the main language that is affected by another is called the matrix language (ML) and the affecting language the embedded language (EL) (Myers-Scotton 2006: 243). On the other hand, Poplack (2017: 7) uses only the term donor language, as she sees codeswitching as not insertion of one language to another but juxtaposition of two (donor) languages. I will discuss Poplack’s point of view in more detail shortly. For the sake of clarity, I will, however, call the dominant language of the texts I studied, which is Finnish, as the matrix language and the language whose influences on Finnish I studied, i.e. English, as the embedded or the donor language.
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Myers-Scotton (2006: 239; Myers-Scotton 1993: 3–4), among others (see also Callahan 2004:
5; Onysko 2007: 286), divides codeswitches to intersentential and intrasentential codeswitches.
Intersentential codeswitches are full donor language sentences that are used among the matrix language sentences. An example is provided by Myers-Scotton (2006: 240), where a stallholder and a customer discuss at a vegetable market in Swahili and English. The bold typeface is used to implicate a switch:
Example 1
Stallholder: Habari, mheshimiwa. (‘Hello, respected sir’.) Have some vegetables.
Customer: Mboga gani? Nipe kabeji hizi. (‘Which vegetables? Give me these cabbages.’) How much is that?
In contrast, intrasentential codeswitches are codeswitches that appear in the middle of a matrix language sentence (Myers-Scotton 2006: 239). They can be one- or multi-word units, but they do not form a complete sentence on their own. Myers-Scotton (2006: 261) introduces also the term embedded language island (EL island), which belongs under the intrasentential codeswitches. EL islands are multi-word codeswitches, which occur within the matrix language sentence (Myers-Scotton 2006: 261; Seitamäki 2013: 21; Callahan 2004: 15). Myers-Scotton (1993: 138; 2006: 261) adds that the EL islands also “show internal structural dependency relations”, which means that the several embedded language words must be connected to each other in order to form an EL island. Myers-Scotton (2006: 262) gives an example of intrasentential codeswitch, more specifically, of the embedded language island in Finnish:
Example 2
Han [sic] luki sen from cover to cover.
In Example 2 Finnish is the matrix language and the English phrase, from cover to cover, is the embedded language island.
Even though both Myers-Scotton (2006: 239) and Callahan (2004: 5) consider codeswitches to be both intrasentential and intersentential, the MLF model in itself considers only intra-clausal switching, which is a specific type of intrasentential codeswitching, that is, switching that occurs within a clause (Myers-Scotton 2006: 253, 239). Intrasentential codeswitches can naturally be also sentences that have one clause in one language and another clause in another
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language, which are not taken into consideration in the model. Moreover, the MLF model considers only classic codeswitching (Myers-Scotton 2006: 253), which Myers-Scotton defines as follows (2006: 241):
Classic codeswitching includes elements from two (or more) languages [sic] varieties in the same clause, but only one of these varieties is the source of the morphosyntactic frame for the clause.
In other words, intersentential codeswitches, intrasentential codeswitches that occur between two or more clauses, and codeswitches that follow different morphosyntactic frames are not examined with the help of Matrix Language Frame model. This makes the MFL model quite restricting, and hence I will not exploit the model as it is. I will rather take as my starting point the wider definition of codeswitches, which includes all types of intrasentential and intersentential codeswitching. However, I will apply some of the terminology and concepts used in the MFL model, for example the terms matrix language and embedded language.
Poplack (2017: 141–142) disagrees with some of the definitions presented above. She argues that, even though there are no theoretical limitations on the length of codeswitches, single-word codeswitches are in fact so rare that they are practically non-existent (Poplack 2017: 7). Single words with donor language origin that occur only once in a given data and are not part of the established lexicon of the matrix, or recipient, language, and hence not bona fide loan words, she calls nonce words, whereas similar items that use the patterns of the recipient language, for example inflections, she sees as nonce borrowings (ibid.). To clarify, single-occurring English- origin words that are not part of, for example, Finnish lexicon, would be called nonce words if they are not inflected (as in Example 3) and nonce borrowings if they are (as in Example 4).
Examples 3 and 4 are invented by me to clarify these terms.
Example 3
Katso, tuolla on dog. ‘Look, there is a dog.’
Example 4
Katso tuota dogia. ‘Look at that dog.’
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As can be seen in Examples 3 and 4, Finnish quite often requires words to be inflected. Hence, Poplack’s strict definition of codeswitches would rarely meet reality. In fact, Poplack (1987:
37) has studied Finnish–English bilingualism and noted that with this language pair nonce borrowings are significantly more common than codeswitches, with the ratio of 5:1. This means that the English words and phrases are inflected with Finnish grammar rules, which, in Poplack’s view, makes them nonce borrowings rather than codeswitches.
Myers-Scotton (1993: 22–23) addresses this issue and notes that while Poplack, Wheeler and Westwood (1987) categorize English nouns with Finnish case markings as nonce borrowings, Myers-Scotton includes these kinds of items as codeswitches. She adds that these types of instances are quite infrequent and hence they might not be accessible to native speakers who have no bilingual competence whatsoever (Myers-Scotton 1993: 22–23). An example of such instance from my data is the word bullshittinä, ‘as bullshit’, which is the English word bullshit inflected with Finnish grammar rules, more specifically with the essive case. Poplack (1987:
37) would regard this as nonce borrowing because of the inflection and the fact that it is a single-word instance. Nevertheless, Myers-Scotton (1993: 23) mentions that by excluding single lexemes from the codeswitch playing field, the data (of codeswitches) becomes simplified.
Both scholars talk about the same phenomenon only with different names, that is, nonce borrowings vs. codeswitches. I have now presented the terms and the discussion on the terms in an extent sufficient for this study. Albeit both scholars discuss these terms more extensively, any wider discussion about these terms is not relevant for the purposes of this thesis. I collect and analyze the instances that Poplack would call nonce borrowings and Myers-Scotton codeswitches, since despite the name of the phenomenon, they are a clear indication of language influence, which is the main topic of this study. I do not intend to divide the instances I study into nonce borrowings and codeswitches separately, because my data is relatively small, and the division into subcategories would result in only few instances. Additionally, I agree with Myers-Scotton’s (1993: 181–182) point that “no explanatory value is gained in exchange for adding another category of description”, that is, nonce borrowings. Hence, I will not make such division but rather treat English-origin single-word units, inflected or not, that have not been established in the Finnish lexicon as codeswitches similarly to multi-word units of English origin.
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In the next section I will introduce some motivations scholars present for using codeswitches.
After that I will define some more terminology often connected to codeswitches and lastly, I will draw distinctions between borrowing and codeswitching.
2.3.1 Reasons for codeswitching
As becomes clear from the previous section, codeswitching is a somewhat complicated phenomenon and scholars have various views regarding it. Next, I will discuss some of the functions different scholars theorize for codeswitches.
Codeswitching is often seen as a speech act performed by bilinguals or multilinguals and it has been studied extensively in multilingual speech communities (e.g. Myers-Scotton 2006;
Poplack 2017). Yet, as Myers-Scotton (2006: 38–45) demonstrates, defining bilingualism and a bilingual speaker is easier said than done. For the purposes of this thesis, where bilingualism is not the focus, the definition presented by Myers-Scotton (2006: 44) is sufficient:
[B]ilingualism is the ability to use two or more languages sufficiently to carry on a limited casual conversation.
Because of the extensive education of English in the Finnish school system, one could say that most Finns, especially younger generations, fit in the definition presented above; most Finns can have short, casual conversations on, for example, asking and giving directions and making coffee orders in English. However, speaking English to an English-speaking person does not meet the criterion for codeswitching; codeswitching happens between two codes, i.e. two languages (see section 2.3; Myers-Scotton 2006: 239). Hence, when defining a reason for codeswitching, one must detect the possible reasons a matrix language speaker, for example a Finn, would have to use English in the midst of otherwise Finnish utterances, or as Myers- Scotton (2006: 143) phrases it: what are “the interpersonally based motivations to choose to use one language rather than another”. She presents the following basic, major reason for codeswitching (2006: 143):
When speakers use a particular variety, they are indicating both their view of themselves and their relationships with other participants in the conversation.
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She admits that this major reason does not rule out other possible motivations for speaking a specific language in a specific situation. She mentions a few reasons for codeswitching, which were already mentioned in section 2.2.2 as possible reasons for borrowing: filling a pragmatic gap in one language or filling a lexical gap (Myers-Scotton 2006: 143). Yet, Myers-Scotton (ibid.) argues that in her research the major reason for selecting a specific language for an utterance is the symbolic value of speaking that language. Thus, the prestige of English discussed in section 2.2.2, could be the motivation to use it among the Finnish.
Callahan (2004: 16) also presents a number of motivations for codeswitching in speech on the basis of sociolinguistic approach. She mentions microsociolinguistic approaches, which include a speaker using codeswitching for stylistic or metaphoric purposes, or self-identification, while macrosociolinguistic approach turns focus on the speech situation in question (Callahan 2004:
16). To specify these different purposes, scholars list at least the following functions for codeswitches: quotation, repetition, interjection, emphasis, clarification, elaboration, focus, attention attraction or retention, topic shift, and role shift (Callahan 2004: 16; McClure 1998:
133).
Most of these different motivations behind codeswitching are clearly intertwined with the speech situation and the relationship between speakers; some choices are more natural in certain situations and between certain people than others. Yet, as mentioned in the beginning of this section, in order to use codeswitches one must be capable of using another language. In fact, Callahan (2004: 16) notes that all of these same functions of codeswitches are performed by monolingual speakers with the help of, for example, prosodic variation or shifts in register.
Hence, she notes that codeswitching is just another tool that bilingual speakers have in their communicative repertoire (ibid.).
Since the focus of this thesis is on written codeswitches, I must assess whether the functions of spoken codeswitches can be applied to the written ones. McClure (1998: 133) notes that functions of written codeswitches do overlap with spoken ones but there are still differences.
For example, she argues that “addressee specification, role shift, and attention attraction are irrelevant in the written mode” (McClure 1998: 133). In her study of Mexican and Spanish journalistic texts, she found ten functions for English codeswitches, which are presented next (McClure 1998: 134):
25 1. Lack of good Spanish translation
2. Lack of a set Spanish word or phrases 3. Greater explicitness of the English form
4. Desire to play with well-known English phrases 5. Emphasis through repetition
6. Simple quotation
7. Quotation to reproduce a style of speech 8. Creation of a sarcastic, satirical, or ironic tone 9. Creation of a sophisticated tone
10. Creation of an erudite tone
These reasons seem extensive and they could be detected as the reasons for most of the codeswitch (or codeswitch hybrid) instances in my data. Yet, as I mentioned in section 2.2.2, the reason for using specific direct loans, hybrids or codeswitches is not the focal point of this thesis. In addition, I believe that since all choices of specific language use are the results of complex individual socio-psychological decisions (see also section 2.2.2; Onysko 2007: 37), detecting those reasons for the instances of my data would require quite a different approach.
Nevertheless, I do examine the instances and their context more closely in the qualitative analysis, and when examining codeswitches I will speculate on the possible reason for their usage by utilizing the different functions given in this section.
In the next section, I will introduce more terminology often used with codeswitches and then I will move on to distinguishing between borrowing and codeswitching.
2.3.2 Flagging
The terms flagging and flags are linked to codeswitches but not exclusively. Flagging is explained by Poplack (2017: 16; Poplack et. al. 1987: 39), who studies mainly spoken language, as drawing attention to the codeswitch or other foreign-originated utterance. In other words, the speaker marks the codeswitch they use in some manner. Since Poplack (2017: 16, 208) studies spoken language, the flagging devices she mentions are appropriate to speech, such as meta- linguistic commentary, repetition, hesitation, intonational highlighting or translation. She provides an example from her study on meta-linguistic speech (Poplack 2017: 208):
