Kilometres by Bicycle

Observations of English in urban and rural Finland

Bibliographic Data

ID4179682
AuthorsMikko Laitinen (0000-0003-3123-6932, Linnaeus University, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume2014
Issue228
Publication date2014-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0165-2516 • E-ISSN: 1613-3668
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ijsl-2014-0005
OpenAlexW2159571125
LanguageEN
Citations received8

This article discusses selected observations of English usage in signage in Finland, a Nordic nation in which the significance of English has become more pronounced in recent decades. The background for this study comes from a large quantitative survey, carried out in 2007, charting the role of English in the Finnish society. One of the topic areas in this survey deals with people's encounters with English and its visibility in their daily life, and this article aims to add a qualitative angle to these results. The observations discussed here were collected in 2009 during a six-day bicycle trip from Helsinki to the regional centre of Oulu. The analysis moves from mere quantitative recording of signs to a more nuanced analysis of interpretations of their situated meanings in public spaces. These observations show that the presence of English in both urban and rural areas of the country is far from a simple phenomenon, and illustrate how charting signs in space provide valuable information on language contact situations

Art · Epistemology · Geography · Linguistic landscape · Linguistics · Media studies · Phenomenon · Political science · Public space · Rural area · Signage · Situated · Sociology · Visibility · Visual arts · Computer Science · History · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Multilingual Education and Policy · Second Language Learning and Teaching

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