Helge Sandøy

Conclusion.: Globalization and language in the Nordic countries: conditions and consequences

1. Comparing empirical findings with the “mountain peak model”In the introduction to this volume, we presented a “mountain peak model” of Nordic purism based on evidence showing that language scholars and lay people are very much in agreement as to where we find the more purist languages and communities in the Nordic area.The peak of openness to foreign influence is to be found in “the middle”, i.e. in Denmark and Sweden, with gradually diminishing openness as we move towards the periphery, be it either westwards across Norway and The Faroes to Iceland or eastwards across Swedish-speaking Finland to Finnish-speaking Finland. In this conclusion to the volume, we will sum-marize the empirical findings presented in the volume, findings for use and attitudes alike, and compare them with the mountain peak model. That way, we may be able to estimate the nature of the cross-national ideologi-cal uniformity on which the model is based. Is the commonly shared repre-sentation of purism differences nothing but an ideological fact, or is there a reality to the mountain peak picture?Furthermore, we will follow up on the introduction’s presentation of the “Nordic laboratory” as a well-chosen place to study the relative impor-tance in language change of language-internal structural factors on the one hand and language-external socio-historical factors on the other hand. However, a complicating fact of our laboratory setting needs to be men-tioned before we proceed. It is a fact that the centre vs. periphery distinc-tion of the mountain peak model does not only correspond to a similarity vs. difference distinction in terms of the linguistic relationships to English, but also to a dominance vs. subordination distinction in terms of the histo-rical relationships between the Nordic communities. In other words, if we find linguistic purism to be more characteristic of the peripheral communi-ties than of the central ones we may be hard put to it to tell whether this is caused by linguistic or socio-historical realities.

Introduction: The linguistic consequences of globalization: the Nordic laboratory

As is well-known from the literature on language contact (e.g. Weinreich 1953; Thomason and Kaufman 1988) the factors and forces that are in play in close and longstanding contact between (speakers of ) two languages are both linguistic and social in nature, and involve both quantitative and qualitative relationships. Indeed, the outcome of language contact is a question of numbers and frequencies in terms of use and users, of sameness vs. difference in terms of linguistic structure, of dominance vs. subordination in terms of socio-historical contexts, etc. The history of the Nordic communities is rich in illustrative examples of such relationships, with Denmark and Sweden as the stronger communities, opposing each other “in the middle” of the Nordic area, all while dominating “the periphery” — westwards in the case of Denmark and Danish with a long history in Norway, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland — eastwards in the case of Sweden and Swedish with a long history in Finland. And we may add the linguistic and socio-historical complexities that relate the Sami people in the far north to the southern majority populations of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Superposed on these intra-Nordic relationships, so to speak, “foreign” cultures and languages — most importantly Latin, German and French — have reached the Nordic area as a whole throughout its history, leaving a similar imprint, with variations, on its languages. The complex linguistic and socio-historical relationships hinted at here are among the most thoroughly studied and documented in the world (Bandle et al. 2002–2005). Against this background, it seems to us that the Nordic area makes up a well-suited “laboratory” for research into the contexts and consequences of today’s globalization and the general advance of English. This is a main consideration behind a large contrastive project which has been running since 2001 in seven Nordic communities, including (from west to east): Iceland, The Faroe Islands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Swedish-speaking Finland, and Finnish-speaking Finland. (The Greenlandic and Sami AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR

English influence on the spoken language — with a special focus on its social, semantic and functional conditioning

Abstract The data for the investigation presented in this article were collected by a questionnaire. A comparison with the corresponding results for written language shows the same overall pattern, with only minor differences: the highest adaptation rate (i.e. change away from English towards the national language) is found with speakers of languages on the periphery of the Nordic area, the lowest rate is found with Danes in the centre of the area. The mean percentage for “adapted” variants is about 60 in the investigation as a whole, but the ranking order of the communities differs for phonology and morphology. Social variables seem to have surprisingly little impact on patterns of adaptation.

Experiences from Nordic research collaboration in linguistics

The project “Modern loanwords in the languages of the Nordic countries (MIN – Moderne importord i spraka i Norden)” was the first large-scale collaborative project between linguists in the Nordic countries. This article presents both the aim of the project and some experiences from the work with respect to project design, financing and networking.