The Fastest Way to Get to the Point : A Glance at Native Finnish Speakers Using English in Everyday Speech
Laitinen, Mokka (2025)
2025
Kielten kandidaattiohjelma - Bachelor's Programme in Languages
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-12-11
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2025120911387
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2025120911387
Tiivistelmä
In a globally interconnected world, contact between languages is ubiquitous, and blending of languages is increasing rapidly. Code-switching has been regarded as a part of multilingual societies, where individuals switch between languages, codes and dialects to navigate through complex social and cultural landscapes. This research seeks to understand how speakers creatively use elements of English to enhance or reflect social identities as well as their communicative intent. While recent researchers have looked into code-switching amongst bilingual speakers and more into the roles of borrowed lexical items, there is less attention paid to the pragmatic strategies such English politeness strategies, conversational implicatures and discourse markers.
The main objective is to uncover generalizable patterns of sentential situations, as well as identify discourse markers and identity features within the language switches. Examining the sudden changing of language within one utterance or conversation, such as code-switching and pragmatic borrowing contributes to a broader understanding of language contact, providing valuable insights for fields such as sociolinguistics, language policy, education and cultural communication. The data was analyzed to identify key patterns and themes in language change in conversations. The data was systematically categorized to uncover underlying themes and a qualitative method was applied to provide a nuanced understanding of language change and code-switching.
The analysis revealed that both inter-sentential and intra-sentential switches were very common and were simultaneously coexisting. Intra-sentential switches were used with more neutral words, mostly verbs and descriptive words. Inter-sentential phrasal switches on the other hand were seen as emotional distancing as well as a chance to personalize speech and have your identity match your verbal output. In addition, the linguistisc phenomena of Finglish and anglisms were discovered also to simultaneously exist with full English embedment.
English in Finland is gaining a status of L2 from EFL and it is no longer only influenced by the domains of use, such as technology or academia, but is often motivated by prestige, identity, and especially, convenience.
The main objective is to uncover generalizable patterns of sentential situations, as well as identify discourse markers and identity features within the language switches. Examining the sudden changing of language within one utterance or conversation, such as code-switching and pragmatic borrowing contributes to a broader understanding of language contact, providing valuable insights for fields such as sociolinguistics, language policy, education and cultural communication. The data was analyzed to identify key patterns and themes in language change in conversations. The data was systematically categorized to uncover underlying themes and a qualitative method was applied to provide a nuanced understanding of language change and code-switching.
The analysis revealed that both inter-sentential and intra-sentential switches were very common and were simultaneously coexisting. Intra-sentential switches were used with more neutral words, mostly verbs and descriptive words. Inter-sentential phrasal switches on the other hand were seen as emotional distancing as well as a chance to personalize speech and have your identity match your verbal output. In addition, the linguistisc phenomena of Finglish and anglisms were discovered also to simultaneously exist with full English embedment.
English in Finland is gaining a status of L2 from EFL and it is no longer only influenced by the domains of use, such as technology or academia, but is often motivated by prestige, identity, and especially, convenience.