A "High-Intimacy" Language in the Atlantic

Radio and Purism in the Faroe Islands

Bibliographic Data

ID2224929
AuthorsStephen Pax Leonard (0000-0003-2166-540X, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume72
Issue1
Pages58-76
Publication date2016-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Anthropological Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0091-7710 • E-ISSN: 2153-3806
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/686174
OpenAlexW2302122550
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited25

This article explains the importance of the Faroese language and the ways in which it is spoken to a Faroese identity. It emphasizes the role and the significance of the radio as well as the policies of linguistic purism, which have been much discussed on air, to build and sustain this identity. A so-called high-intimacy language and public radio make for an obvious ethnographic juxtaposition. The shaping of affective experience through radio sound is heightened if the voice is known, and if the speech and language of the voice index a matrix of values shared by a small, interrelated group. Playing off this sense of familiarity which is embraced in the Faroe Islands (a rather isolated community between Iceland and Scotland governed according to Self-Rule), language has been the tool for the cultivation of a Faroese identity at a time when the Faroes’ relationship to Denmark has looked increasingly uncertain

Geology · History · Media Studies and Communication

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