Tore Kristiansen

The macro-level social meanings of late-modern Danish accents

The paper reports on the main findings of the LANCHART language attitudes studies. These studies were designed to falsify (or modify) the picture of adolescent language ideology – and its role in language change – that had emerged from previous sociolinguistic studies in Denmark. This picture is formulated as three hypotheses: (1) There are two value systems at two levels of consciousness, (2) Language change is governed by subconscious values, (3) Copenhagen is Denmarks only linguistic norm centre. Following strict guidelines for data collection among 9th graders (aged 15–16) in Copenhagen, Næstved, Vissenbjerg, Odder, and Vinderup we obtained subconsciously offered attitudes that could be compared with consciously offered attitudes. The results neither falsify nor modify the established picture but strongly confirm it.

Indexical meanings of [s+] among Copenhagen youth: Social perception of a phonetic variant in different prosodic contexts

It is well documented that the same sociolinguistic feature can be used as a sociolinguistic resource with different indexical potentials in different linguistic as well as social contexts. Often, however, indexical meanings of a specific feature are related to or derived from one another. In this article we present the results of a perceptual study of indexical meanings of alveolar versus fronted (s)—[s] versus [sþ]—in different registers. The data consist of responses to male speakers’ use of [s] and [sþ] respectively, in two different registers that may be labelled “modern Copenhagen speech” and “street language.” Results show that the [sþ] indexes femininity and gayness when it occurs in “modern Copenhagen,” whereas the (s)-variation has a different and less significant effect when occurring in “street language.” We discuss the implications for theories of indexical fields and the relation between features and clusters of features in speakers’ perceptions. (Indexical meaning, phonetic variation, fronted /s/, perception of sexual orientation and ethnicity, matched guise technique).

Ethnolinguistic vitality in the Danish capital of America

Abstract This paper analyses objective/subjective and qualitative/quantitative aspects of vitality in Solvang, a Danish‐American community. The setting is interesting for its radical transformation from being all about leading a fulfilling (Grundtvigian) community life to being instrumentally all about attracting tourists with an external Danish facade. By ethnographic‐like means, we analyse the historical vitality of Solvang to the present leading us to formulate hypotheses for testing in three investigations using the Subjective Vitality Questionnaire (SVQ) with adolescent and adult Danish‐ and Anglo‐Americans. Informants were realistic in their evaluations associating Danish strengths with the past, judging Anglos and Danes as currently equal economically and culturally, and ranking Danes lower than both Anglos and Hispanics as to language use and demographics. Younger Anglos viewed Hispanic vitality more positively than their elders. A so‐called ‘perceptual distortions in favour of the outgroup’ profi...

Conscious and subconscious attitudes towards English influence in the Nordic countries: evidence for two levels of language ideology

Abstract The article reports on how the present-day influence from English is perceived and assessed in seven Nordic communities. The focus is on comparison, between the seven communities, and between two data sets obtained under different conditions of consciousness. The comparisons show that the populations reproduce the “purism level” of their own communitys official language policy in their consciously offered responses to questions in a telephone survey, while the purism–laissez-faire ranking of the communities is turned upside down in a subconsciously offered data set obtained in a speaker evaluation experiment based on the matched-guise technique. In the same way, analyses of how the evaluative reactions correlate with social-group divisions show reproduction and non-reproduction of the stereotypically expected correlations, in the conscious and subconscious conditions respectively.

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

The power of tradition a study of attitudes towards English in seven nordic communities

Abstract The theoretical assumption of this study is that all speech communities have an ‘ideological climate’ in relation to linguistic influence from abroad, and that this climate develops and changes as an integral part of the multiple relationships of dominance and dependence between communities. Attitudes towards todays influence from English are compared across seven Nordic countries, and it is argued that the resulting pattern testifies more to the vitality of traditional ideological differences than to the detraditionalising force of globalisation.

Standard languages and multilingualism in European history

This book – scholarship at its best – builds upon a special issue ofModern Fiction Studies, adding four new essays and a revised introduction. It examines the relationships between Paris and Black writers from America, Africa and the Caribbean in the early to mid-twentieth century. The book is in three parts: the first two (‘Afro-Modernism’ and ‘Postwar Paris and the Politics of Literature’) comprise five essays each, while the third (‘From Negritude to Migritude’) contains four essays and an Afterword. A striking feature here is the great variety of coverage; beyond that implied in the subtitle, the topics dealt with include feminism, history, philosophy and sociology (to cite only the main ones). The variety of images of Paris that the chapters provide is both interesting and intriguing. It is a place of promotion and self-promotion in Rebecka Rutledge Fisher’s ‘Cultural Artifacts and the Narrative of History: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Exhibiting of Culture at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle’. It is also one of friendship, connection and awakening, as Anna Julie Cooper befriends Jane Narda and the latter discovers and dedicates herself to ‘a transnational “esprit de race”’ (23). Other positive images of the city are also revealed. At one point, it was the ‘center of Negro vogue’ (103), as Jennifer Wilks notes in her chapter on Jean Toomer and Aimé Césaire – a city that brought great success to Josephine Baker, that most formidable entertainer. Paris was also a place of confrontation, however, as the desire to be ‘the’ Negro writer pitted James Baldwin against his mentor, Richard Wright. And it was a capital of colonial power, as Cedric Tolliver points out at the beginning of his contribution (‘Making Culture Capital: Présence Africaine and Diasporic Modernity in Post-World War II Paris’). Social theorists argue that change, growth and maturity are achieved through conflict and crisis, and the varying images depicted here also highlight progress and success. Similarly, they are what made Paris, in both real and metaphorical senses, the breeding ground and the inspiration for so many intellectuals and their modernist works. Scholars in a number of fields will approve of this well-written and richly documented collection.