Murteet kielellisessä elämäkerrassa: Monikulttuuristen suomenpuhujien käsityksiä itsestään suomen murteiden käyttäjinä

Abstract

The article discusses how Finnish speakers with multicultural background describe their use of dialects in a language biographical interview. The analysis shows how interviewees construct their linguistic identity while talking about their perceptions and experiences on dialects. Dialects are part of their repertoire that is anchored in their life story. The study is connected to sociolinguistic research on language perceptions, language biographies, folk linguistics and language ideologies. Data come from a project Hundred linguistic life stories and consist of 23 interviews. The group of interviewees is heterogenous: There are 11 informants who immigrated to Finland as adults, eight as children or youngsters, and four who were born in Finland but have recent migration background in a multilingual family. <br/>Individual linguistic background and Finnish language skills are taken into account in the analysis; main focus is on how the interviewees construct their relationship to dialects as part of their repertoire. Growing linguistic awareness increases along with language resources, and the interviewees also negotiate social meanings of linguistic variation in Finland. First, the study shows how the interviewees describe their understanding of dialects. When language skills of Finnish are weaker, dialects are not even recognized, and they can be seen as an extra challenge for learners. Even later, with high command of Finnish, dialects can be described as somehow difficult. Second, analysis discusses how the informants describe their acquiring dialects especially when they have moved inside Finland. Dialects are connected with different places during their life story; these places have had an impact on their awareness of linguistic variation. Some informants describe that they have given up of dialectal features and this shows their personal choices and new understanding of certain ways of speaking. Finally, the analysis discusses how the interviewees describe their dialect use. Those who have lived in certain dialect areas describe their use of local dialect even if their Finnish skills are not very strong. Comments received from others are frequent, and refering to these may express uncertainty of own dialect use but these voices can been seen as a stronger evidence of their use of local dialect. <br/>Multiculturals’ contacts with regional dialects is a relevant topic that also concerns questions of socialization into society. Awareness of linguistic variation grows little by little but the dialects can be part of the repertoire and identity in different phases of multicultural speakers’ linguistic journey. The descriptions constructed in the interviews also renew the perceptions of dialect speakers in Finland. <br/>