Language Discourses and Contacts in the Twenty-First-Century Far North—Introduction to the Volume

Abstract

With this volume, we invite you on a trip to the Far North of Europe, to Finland and its neighbouring countries Estonia and Sweden, and across the Arctic circle to the Lapland area which stretches from northernmost Scandinavia in the west to northern Finland and North-Western Russia. This is the area in which the Saami and Finnic peoples have lived for centuries, forming language contacts and discourses that are in constant change. On the pages of this book, we will introduce you to some of the inhabitants in this area and familiarise you with their everyday linguistic practices during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We cover under-studied topics such as the linguistic situation of indigenous Saami people and the language attitudes of twenty-first-century migrants. In the chapters of the book, we will discuss individual language users’ talk about linguistic identities and their use of different languages. We will also explore their linguistic attitudes, ideologies, and ways in which their language use and their talk about language reflect their personal social relations and society at large.