A new article “Making sense of linguistic diversity in Helsinki, Finland: the timespace of affects in the linguistic landscape” by Hanna-Mari Pienimäki, @tuomo, and me is out: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/josl.12633.
We conducted #fieldwork in three linguistically diverse neighborhoods in #Helsinki Finland. We selected the sites using a method that combines #SocialMedia and population registry data with quantitative measures of #diversity and #spatial analytics. #Research #Sociolinguistics #LinguisticLandscape
The fieldwork included photographing signs and doing walking interviews with people in the city center, #Itäkeskus and #Pihlajamäki. We found each site to have its own distinct affective atmosphere, which was discursively construed and made sense of through references to other places and times.
E.g. in the city center both the visual linguistic landscape and our interviewees highlighted the relevance of English for commercial purposes that target a global audience, i.e. tourists.
In Itäkeskus interviewees talked about cultural and ethnic diversity; for some it was welcomed as “internationalization” while others were less pleased. Some of the foreigners also described encountering varying forms of discrimination.
In Pihlajamäki, however, the diversity was near unanimously and almost exclusively framed positively. Pihlajamäki was characterized as a communal place in which the coexistence of people with different backgrounds was harmonious, peaceful and safe.
The #timespace analysis of #affects provides conceptual and methodological tools that allow analyzing the change and circulation of social meanings in the landscape, as well as differences in these aspects across settings.
The methodological tools we adopted elaborated how people make sense of, interact with and discursively construe their relationship to the #linguistic #landscape in a given #spatiotemporal conjunction.