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Official Language Policy as a Factor in Using Receptive Multilingualism Among Members of an Estonian and a Finnish Student Organization

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Language Policy Beyond the State

Part of the book series: Language Policy ((LAPO,volume 14))

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Abstract

This study analyzes the language policy of an Estonian student organization and its Finnish friendship organization, and the use of different languages in inter-organizational interaction. The organizations have an official language policy for the use of receptive multilingualism in written communication, originating from their agreement of friendship (est. 1933). Receptive multilingualism refers to interaction in which participants employ a language different from their interlocutors’. By combining survey and interactional data, this study investigates how this official policy, which grew out of the national romantic ideology that emphasized the linguistic and cultural similarity of Estonians and Finns, is interpreted today. It further investigates the present-day language practices among the members of the studied organizations. An analysis of different types of data revealed competing ideologies of the “ideal” and the “practical.” Despite the respondents’ stated preference for using Finnish and Estonian, to ensure mutual understanding they often considered the most effective choice to be English as a lingua franca. Even so, English was not the dominant language choice in the interactional data, and receptive multilingualism was used particularly in multiparty interaction when at least some of the participants had an active command of both languages.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term “Finnic” refers to the Finnic languages, such as Finnish, Estonian, Karelian and Veps, and their speakers. The Finnic languages are a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 6.5 million people. The Finnic languages with the most speakers and having the status of national languages are Finnish and Estonian (see e.g. Laakso 2001).

  2. 2.

    Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland.

  3. 3.

    Even less so when Icelanders and Finnish-speaking Finns are involved (see Delsing and Lundin Åkeson 2005; Östman and Thøgersen 2010, 112).

  4. 4.

    See Graf and Roiko-Jokela (2004, 169–189) on the importance of Finnish TV broadcasts in northern Estonia during the Soviet era, and the sporadic learning of Finnish through Finnish TV.

  5. 5.

    The Eurobarometer reported the three most common languages spoken besides the mother tongue. Estonian was not on the Finns’ list.

  6. 6.

    This study defines “topical units” as stretches of conversation where one topic is discussed.

  7. 7.

    This study uses Härmävaara’s (2014) elaborated definition of RM.

  8. 8.

    All translations are by the author.

  9. 9.

    The category “other” contains all the topical units in which Finnish and Estonian were not spoken among participants with different native languages. For example, bilingual participants with a shared native language could produce some of the turns in one language and some in the other. This is also a left-over category for strings of conversation where participants with different native languages talked simultaneously but did not really engage in the same conversation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara

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  1. Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara
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Correspondence to Hanna-Ilona Härmävaara .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Maarja Siiner

  2. Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Kadri Koreinik

  3. Educational Studies, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, USA

    Kara D. Brown

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Härmävaara, HI. (2017). Official Language Policy as a Factor in Using Receptive Multilingualism Among Members of an Estonian and a Finnish Student Organization. In: Siiner, M., Koreinik, K., Brown, K. (eds) Language Policy Beyond the State. Language Policy, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52993-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52993-6_11

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52993-6

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