Språkuppfattningar och röster i österbottniska flerspråkiga elevers stiliserade tal

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates stylized speech performed by multilingual pupils who use a Finland-Swedish dialect, Finnish, and standard Swedish as linguistic resources. Moreover, the aim is, by using methods from interactional sociolinguistics, to identify linguistic and paralinguistic features of their stylized speech and what kind of explicit and implicit language beliefs and voices they convey. The analysis shows that the pupils stylize the standard Swedish language as well as the Finnish language in different ways, but not their Finland-Swedish dialect. The stylizations reflect both explicitly and implicitly the pupils’ beliefs about the language policy in the classroom, as well as their attitudes towards their language resources and their experiences with them. Moreover, the stylizations reflect beliefs about a shared language register. The voices identified in connection with the stylizations are polyphonic: partly, the pupils’ voice is heard, and partly the pupils impact each other’s voices. A voice of authority is identified as is the voice of someone not belonging to the same language group. The stylizations, language beliefs, and voices are linked to the pupils’ personal experiences, the norms and expectations that apply in the interaction, and the explicit and implicit discourses about their language resources.