Media Language Planning During a Pandemic – the Influence of Covid-19 on Language Recommendations to Swedish Media in Finland

Jenny Stenberg-Sirén

doi:10.53779/sfjk2096

Abstract

A global crisis, like the Covid-19 pandemic, can change not only societies but also languages by a great input of new terminology. For speakers of a minority language, media is in a key position to provide them with these new words in their own language. In the case of Finland-Swedish, the Swedish media in Finland is helped by professional language advisers in this language planning task. This study analyses the media language management in Finland-Swedish media, through a content analysis of language recommendations published between February 2020 and April 2021, as well as interviews with media language advisers. The analysis shows that about a quarter of the language recommendations published during these 15 months are coronavirus-related. The topics in the recommendations follow the development of the outbreak in Finland, showing how closely the language advisers work with the news organizations. Contrary to normal situations, the Finland-Swedish media language advisers could not fully rely on the language recommendations from Sweden, due to their different Covid-19 strategies. Instead, the norm authorities were experts in ministries and official institutions, illustrating how language planning is done collectively. The Finland-Swedish journalists rely heavily on the media language recommendations, showing a certain linguistic insecurity, which according to Muhr (2012) is typical for speakers of non-dominant varieties of a pluricentric language.

Highlights

A global crisis, like the Covid-19 pandemic, can change societies and languages by a great input of new terminology
One of the aspects they highlight is the lack of research on the role minority language media (MLM) institutions play in developing and maintaining the standard language, by asking “How might/how do the media play a role in the actual development of standards, including the very important dimension of creation of new terminologies for various phenomena?” This study focuses on precisely that aspect, using the case of the Covid-19 pandemic and Swedish-language media in Finland
By reporting on news and current affairs, journalists constantly face the task of finding words for new phenomena in society. This corpus-planning task is emphasised for journalists working in a minority language, since new concepts often occur in the majority language first

Summary

Introduction

A global crisis, like the Covid-19 pandemic, can change societies and languages by a great input of new terminology. By reporting on news and current affairs, journalists constantly face the task of finding words for new phenomena in society This corpus-planning task is emphasised for journalists working in a minority language, since new concepts often occur in the majority language first. Such an example can be found in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands, where the scientific institute for language and culture, the Fryske Akademy, published a wordlist with coronavirus-related terminology in the minority language of Frisian to guide the MLM journalists (Fryske Akademy, 2020). The exceptional year of 2020 has emphasized the role of language planning, making it a relevant object for study

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