Language - mirror of culture : a case study on language socialization with Finns living in Finland and Sweden, and Swedes living in Sweden

• The purpose of the present study was to compare language socialization, i.e. how to use language and how to socialize children to use language, in three cultural groups: Finns living in Finland and Sweden and Swedes living in Sweden. Since language socialization is assumed to result in a conversational style, this was studied from different angles. The participants consisted of 20 families in each group with a target child, aged 9-13 years. The empirical data was collected by video recording a mealtime conversation with each family. The video recordings were transcribed by using the CHAT system. The analyses of data demonstrated cultural variations in interaction between Finns and Swedes. The Swedes displayed a higher involvement style than the Finns in different ways. The Swedes produced more talk and they had shorter inter-turn pauses. They elicited talk using more varied syntactic forms which also were somewhat more implicit than the forms used by Finns. The Swedish preference for negotiating and even arguing in immediate responses to negative comments provided a further difference. The Finns spoke mainly about facts, and did not leave an opening for discussion. The groups also differed from one another by showing different social norms and values. The Swedes commented more on moral and ethic issues whereas the Finns commented more on table manners. On the whole, a comparison of two neighbor countries indicated different conversational styles which are assumed to arise from different socialization styles. The cross-cultural comparison of Finns in two communities displayed a strong SwedishFinnish conversational adherence to the Finnish style. The children showed conversational congruity with the parents in each group. The findings indicated that Finnish and Swedish children in meeting each other, for example, in a classroom might have different conversational abilities when contributing to conversations.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Language Studies and Linguistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Sociolinguistics

cultural comparison

language socialization

family dinner conversation

conversational style

involvement

Språksocialisation

Finnar

språk

Sverige

Svenskar

pedagogik

Education

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

dok (ämneskategori)