AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

This study investigates codeswitching by Finns who live in Estonia. It draws from spoken and written interactional data where mainly Finnish is used, but where the participants also employ their Estonian resources. The articles in the study focus on a selection of grammatical and discourse-related phenomena, namely the formation of compound nouns, codeswitching in reported speech, conversational sequence closings, and the functions of codeswitching in social media. The introductory article provides a general overview of codeswitching in the data: patterns of forming bilingual constructions, their emergence in the flow of conversation and their consequences in interaction. The theoretical framework of the study comes from the field of interactional linguistics. The data consist of ca. 900 cases of Finnish-Estonian codeswitching in audio- and videorecorded conversations, email messages, and writings in social media, which were all collected in 2002-2012 from Finns who had lived in Estonia for up to 17 years at the time of recording. An internet-based survey and the researcher s field notes gave additional sociolinguistic background data. The data show that Estonian lexical forms and meanings are employed in Finnish contexts, that the case assignment of phrasal and clausal constructions may be mixed, and that the speakers sometimes use Estonian-like word order. Two shapes are described that often attract codeswitching in one- or multi-word constructions. The first one (named ravioli in the study) are bilingual homophones whose form is similar, although not necessarily identical, in the two languages, but whose meaning differs. These constructions attract semantic borrowing so that they are used in their Finnish form but Estonian meaning. The second shape (named farfalle) are bipartite constructions such as noun-noun compounds, existential and subject complement clauses and voicing constructions, where one of the parts specifies, modifies, characterises or demonstrates that which is identified in the other part. In them, the switch happens in between the parts, typically so that the part doing specification, characterisation, modification or demonstration is in Estonian. Interactional linguists understand grammar to be emergent in interaction, for the needs of the on-going situation. This view is supported by findings of sequentially motivated codeswitching in the data. Codeswitching is a heteroglossic device that speakers use for indirect evaluation, social indexing, and distancing themselves from what is said. Codeswitching is also used for tying utterances to previous ones, and for the modification of an utterance that is repeated. Usually codeswitching helps further the participants interactional projects, but in some cases it becomes an obstacle that results in side sequences and disalignment, disaffiliation or even teasing. Tutkimus käsittelee Virossa asuvien suomalaisten koodinvaihtoa, jolla tässä tarkoitetaan sitä, miten puhujat käyttävät suomenkielisen puheen tai kirjoituksen seassa osin tai kokonaan…