Finnish Language Research Articles

The importance of socio-emotional skills obtained before the COVID-19 pandemic in supporting study engagement during the pandemic and transition to higher education

This study investigated the development of study engagement from the end of upper secondary school through the first and second years of higher education. The participants experienced the challenges related to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic while they were either university students or preparing for university entrance exams. The study employed a person-oriented approach to determine what kind of developmental trajectories emerge in study engagement when following the student participants from the end of upper secondary school through the first and second years of higher education. Furthermore, the study investigated whether socio-emotional skills obtained by the end of secondary school and before the pandemic play a role in more adaptive development through demanding restrictions related to the worldwide pandemic and general changes in the learning environment. The 852 participants answered questionnaires on study engagement and socio-emotional skills in spring 2019, and of them, 426 individuals who continued their education answered regarding study engagement again in spring 2020 and winter 2020/2021. The grades in math and Finnish language were also included. The results indicated that most students tended to experience a drop in study engagement during the first wave of COVID-19 compared to the pre-pandemic level; however, they managed to boost their engagement back to previous levels approximately 6 months later. Students who managed to recover their engagement also tended to have higher socio-emotional skills than students who were struggling with study engagement before the pandemic or who started to struggle during the pandemic.

Online public language policing as a biopower

The pervasive integration of the internet and social media into contemporary society has provided ordinary language users with a far-reaching and ever-vigilant surveillance tool that can be used to monitor, regulate, and control social norms, including language norms. When the target of this regulation is language, the practice is known as language policing. By categorizing and analyzing micro-level, community-based language policing practices in posts and comments from three Finnish Facebook language discussion groups, this article examines language policing as a form of biopower. It serves as a mechanism through which ordinary language users can police written Standard Finnish, control each other's language usage, reproduce dominant language ideologies, and, conversely, challenge them. Using a theory-driven content analysis approach and drawing upon the concepts of shaming types developed by Murumaa-Mengel and Muuli, as well as Foucault's theory of biopower, the analysis reveals two distinct techniques. Firstly, it demonstrates that normation occurs through language policing practices such as denunciatory, recreational, pedagogic, and participative approaches. These practices serve to reinforce established language norms and are in line with standard language ideology. Secondly, the analysis highlights the technique of normalization, in the forms of reflective and normalizing language policing practices. These offer a more critical view of codified language norms and are more accepting of norm-deviations, aligning with more critical language ideologies.

A Sisyphean task of qualifying for digital citizenship? The precarious learning processes of disadvantaged migrant women in the context of inordinate expectations

ABSTRACT Contemporary states aiming to increase cost-effectiveness in public services through digitalisation advocate for digital citizenship. All citizens are expected to become fluent users of digital public services despite their varying circumstances. This study explores this issue for migrant women in Finland acquiring essential skills for digital citizenship: digital proficiency, fluency in the Finnish language, and understanding public administration. Using semi-structured interviews with structurally disadvantaged migrant women (N = 22), I analyse each skill acquisition as a complex temporal process. The analysis reveals that acquiring digital citizenship skills can be a prolonged process influenced by multiple temporal orders originating from both individual circumstances and external processes. Despite the investments made in acquiring these skills, citizens may remain unqualified. In conclusion, states that emphasize digital citizenship skills may assign structurally disadvantaged people a Sisyphean task, thereby leading to the narrowing of the realization of their citizen rights and, consequently, their citizenship.

Vastasaapuneiden oppilaiden tiedonalakohtaisten lukutaitojen arviointi: Kielididaktinen näkökulma oppimisen tukeen

The purpose of preparatory education is to familiarise newly arrived pupils with the language of instruction and the school system so that they achieve the skills needed in attending basic education. In this paper, we introduce and examine an assessment tool, “Valu”, designed to assess newly arrived pupils’ disciplinary literacy skills in Finnish in this critical phase. We analyse assessment data and our observations from the first piloting round of the tool, to gain understanding about how primary school pupils’ literacy can be assessed in Finnish language and literature, and mathematics, and about the support the pupils need in completing the tasks. Our findings highlight the importance of teachers’ interactionist support, even though the pupils show signs of learning how to utilise the interventionist support within the Valu tool. Newly arrived pupils studying Finnish language and literature, and mathematics can be supported by recognising what kind of support they need and where.

Näkymättömyysviitta ja tuntoisuuskysymys – kielenomistajuus, kehollisuus ja tila kielikeskusopiskelijoiden kertomina

This article examines university students’ experiences with the embodied and spatial aspects of language learning and use, along with the concept of language ownership. Bridging sociolinguistics, cognitive science, and the phenomenology of embodiment, the study is based on 11 thematic interviews with students who have taken at least one language course at a Finnish university language center. Our data illustrates how language users describe their bodily and spatial language experiences. We also demonstrate that language ownership, akin to grounded cognition, exists at the intersection of sensory perception, the external body as the object of perception, and the material and social environment. This research enriches the discussion on language learning environments and practices in higher education, while providing an interdisciplinary perspective on sociolinguistic concepts.

Scaffolding learning through reflection: Finnish language students recycling, negotiating, and reinterpreting instructions in a portfolio assignment

Students’ everyday life interactions in the wild are an important resource for their language learning, and reflection helps in utilizing the learning potential of these experiences. Students need scaffolding to benefit from reflection, and task design must support learners’ agency. These requirements suggest a need to examine and develop such reflection tasks. This paper examines a portfolio task developed by the teacher-researcher to enhance students’ learning in the wild as part of an U.S. university-level Finnish Studies program. Drawing on nexus analysis and using discourse analysis, the paper maps and analyzes how phrases from the instructions circulate to the subsequent reflections, and what the implications of this circulation are for the discourses created as well as for learning. The analysis reveals how the students recycle, negotiate, and reinterpret phrases from the original task, and how the task scaffolds the reflections. Pedagogical implications focus on how the task can be developed. The author advocates for the use of nexus analysis in teacher research to bridge research practice with task development and instructional change. As part of their training, pre-service teachers are recommended to collect and analyze student data to study the implications of the learning tasks they develop and use.

Luonteenvahvuuksien hyödyntäminen aikuisten suomen kielen oppimisessa

In this article, I will explore how to utilize character strengths in Finnish language learning. This study relies on VIA strengths inventory (Peterson & Seligman 2004). I will examine which character strengths adult Finnish learners utilize and how character strengths are related to learning Finnish, as well as participants’ beliefs regarding character strength intervention. The data of this qualitative study consist of an online questionnaire (n=32), individual and group info meetings online (n=21), character strengths intervention (n=8) and final interviews (n=4). The data were analyzed using content analysis. The results indicate that while some strengths are easily applicable to learning Finnish, others prove challenging to employ in language learning. Furthermore, the findings suggest that while participants found the character strength exercise interesting and enlightening, they expressed a desire for examples demonstrating the application of strengths, along with guidance on identifying and utilizing them.

Towards Sustainable Mental Health Using the Finnish Mood Scale

The interest in mental health in a sports context has increased in recent years. However, there is no scientifically sound measurement tool for assessing sport-related mental health symptoms in the Finnish language. One of the most frequently used measurement tools for such symptoms in English is the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS). The purpose of the present study was to adapt and validate a Finnish version of the BRUMS, referred to as the Finnish Mood Scale (FIMS). The 24-item, 6-factor FIMS was administered to 445 Finnish participants concurrently with Finnish versions of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and the Psychobiosocial States Scale (PBS-S). The sample consisted of 259 females (58.2%), 177 males (39.8%), and 9 who did not disclose their gender (2%), aged 16 to 75 years (M = 35.65, SD = 13.70). Sixty-two participants (13.9%) reported being a competitive athlete, 273 (61.3%) were regular exercisers, and 109 (24.5%) did not exercise regularly. A six-factor modified CFA model indicated an adequate fit to the data (CFI = 0.944, TLI = 0.934, RMSEA = 0.060). Concurrent measures correlated with FIMS in line with theoretical predictions, supporting convergent and divergent validity. Males reported significantly more positive mood scores than females. Physically active participants reported significantly more positive mood scores than inactive individuals, endorsing the mental health benefits of physical exercise. Findings indicate that the FIMS is a suitable measurement tool to screen mood modalities in Finnish populations aged 16 years and older. FIMS may be useful for the early detection of mental ill-health, thus, promoting sustainable mental health.

What's left when a language recedes? Belonging and place-making in the linguistic landscape of Hancock, Michigan

Our study examines how meanings related to Finnishness are reflected in the linguistic landscape of Hancock, Michigan, a small town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Centering on Benedict Anderson’s (1983/2003) concept, imagined communities, we investigate how discursive strategies in public spaces index belonging and place-making. The social correlates that underpin this reimagining affect ways of understanding larger sociocultural meanings about identity, place, and language use (Cornips & de Rooij 2015; Blommaert 2013; Bucholtz & Hall 2004; Leeman & Modan 2009). We aim to answer three questions: 1) how is Finnishness discursively indexed in Hancock’s linguistic landscape?; 2) how are meanings represented as recognizable and valued?; and 3) what are the ideological effects of the discursive practices and related meanings? Our analysis demonstrates that both linguistic and metalinguistic practices are abundant in Hancock. The ideological effects of Finnishness in the landscape reinforce values of Finnish identity and language, while simultaneously erasing (Gal & Irvine 2000) languages and identities of other residents, past and present. The collective discursive practices function ideologically to affect belonging and place-making.

Verbs of Thinking Activity in Erzya and Finnish Languages: Semantic Aspect

Verbs of Thinking Activity in Erzya and Finnish Languages: Semantic Aspect

Text Clustering of Icelandic Post-Medieval Þulur

This article explores the possibilities of applying Runoregi – a user interface for browsing automatically computed textual similarity, originally designed for studying the Finnic oral tradition – in the research of Icelandic post-medieval þulur. Along with challenges common to oral poetry collections, the latter corpus presents some peculiar issues related to the specificity of the genre, as well as to the difference between Icelandic and the Finnic languages. Preliminary results show that the automatic poem clustering featured in Runoregi corresponds well to an existing scholarly analysis, while features such as dendrograms, side-by-side alignments or similar passage search are useful in exploratory research.

The historical background and imperial context of the Finnish language decree of 1850

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Impact of Cultural-Linguistic Differences on Vocal Fatigue Perception: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

The perception of a clinical condition or disorder can vary across patients from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds. There is insufficient evidence to inspect this potential impact on the perception of vocal fatigue (VF) as a common condition perceived by patients with voice disorders. In order to more comprehensively explore this phenomenon, a systematic review was carried out to investigate the differences in perceived VF in a variety of cultural-linguistic contexts, based on a standard self-assessment instrument-the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI), as translated in different languages. A thorough search was done in MEDLINE, CENTRAL, Web of Science, and Google Scholar by March 2024. Cross-sectional studies investigating the accuracy of the VFI to detect perceived VF in all available languages were considered. The VFI has three distinct parts or factors assessing: (a) tiredness of voice, (b) physical discomfort associated with voicing, and (c) improvement of symptoms with rest. The cutoff points and sensitivity and specificity of each factor were submitted to meta-analysis, and the summary receiver operating characteristic curves were used to determine pooled sensitivity and specificity of each factor of the VFI. Eight papers that examined the diagnostic accuracy of the VFI in English, Malayalam, Turkish, German, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Cantonese, and Finnish languages were identified as being eligible for this meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity and specificity along with their confidence intervals (CIs) were as follows: 0.91 CI [0.80, 0.96] and 0.88 CI [0.78, 0.94] for Factor 1, 0.83 CI [0.69, 0.91] and 0.84 CI [0.76, 0.89] for Factor 2, and 0.75 CI [0.67, 0.82] and 0.77 CI [0.59, 0.89] for Factor 3. The present research demonstrates medium to high but heterogeneous accuracy of the VFI for detecting perceived VF across cultural-linguistic contexts. Given the promising results, future studies should focus on (a) further investigating the underlying factors for the observed heterogeneity in diagnostic accuracy and (b) adapting and validating the VFI in more languages toward establishing its validity as a cross-linguistic diagnostic tool for the perception of VF. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26397106.

Subword Representations Successfully Decode Brain Responses to Morphologically Complex Written Words

Abstract This study extends the idea of decoding word-evoked brain activations using a corpus-semantic vector space to multimorphemic words in the agglutinative Finnish language. The corpus-semantic models are trained on word segments, and decoding is carried out with word vectors that are composed of these segments. We tested several alternative vector-space models using different segmentations: no segmentation (whole word), linguistic morphemes, statistical morphemes, random segmentation, and character-level 1-, 2- and 3-grams, and paired them with recorded MEG responses to multimorphemic words in a visual word recognition task. For all variants, the decoding accuracy exceeded the standard word-label permutation-based significance thresholds at 350–500 ms after stimulus onset. However, the critical segment-label permutation test revealed that only those segmentations that were morphologically aware reached significance in the brain decoding task. The results suggest that both whole-word forms and morphemes are represented in the brain and show that neural decoding using corpus-semantic word representations derived from compositional subword segments is applicable also for multimorphemic word forms. This is especially relevant for languages with complex morphology, because a large proportion of word forms are rare and it can be difficult to find statistically reliable surface representations for them in any large corpus.

SEMANTIC PORTRAIT OF WAINAMOINEN IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF “KALEVALA”

The article presents a comparative analysis of the semantic portraits of the singer and the cultural hero Wainamoinen in two English translations of the epic “Kalevala” made by William Forsell Kirby and John Martin Crawford. Following a certain algorithm, the different-structured nominations of the hero are classified and subjected to component analysis, through which an inventory of semes and semes’ specifiers is fixed, which allows to identify isomorphic and allomorphic characteristics in the portraits of the hero. The study shows that the dominant position in the semantic portrait of Wainamoinen is occupied by the so-called song space of the hero, since singing is the main activity of Wainamoinen by means of which he influences the surrounding world. The semantic portrait of Wainamoinen is a four-level structure, including nominations (1) characterizing him as a singer, (2) characterizing his singing, (3) characterizing the process of his singing and (4) characterizing functions of his singing. The study also demonstrates an importance of nominations which have the structure of a sentence and super-phrasal unity. They allow to fix additional semes in lexical nominations. The article concludes that the semantic allomorphs of Wainamoinen’s portrait characteristics are determined by both linguistic aspects (the choice of the source text for translation: original text in the Finnish language and the interlinear translation in German) and extralinguistic aspects: differences between British and American lingua cultures and personal preferences of each translator.

Russian culture through the prism of English, Finnish and Japanese languages: Reflections or refractions?

Thinning borders in the modern world result in intense translingual/transcultural communication. Yet, a language is originally fit to describe its own culture, while cultural reorientation requires considerable adaptation. The paper aims at researching the mechanisms of languages’ cultural reorientation as exemplified by the Japanese-, English- and Finnish-language Russia-centred discourse. The cultural reorientation of a language is seen as a mode of translation – translation of culture. Research questions are: What linguistic techniques to introduce exocultural context are preferred by the focus languages? What elements of the source culture are selected for constructing the Russia-centred discourse in the focus languages? The research is based on data in three unrelated languages. The data is organised in manually annotated corpora of culturally loaded texts of book titles. The analysis of translation techniques employed by different languages in the process of cultural reorientation revealed (a) the specificity of the strategy of translating culture as contrasted to that of traditional translation; (b) the features of the exoculture-centred discourse as affected by language-specific linguistic factors. The study of xenonyms, selected to represent the source culture, shows a considerable variation in the choice of representatives, while the types of xenonyms are largely comparable. The cross-linguistic research of Russia-centred discourse is crucial for understanding established discursive canon, which must serve as guidance for presenting and promoting Russian culture in intercultural dialogue.

Training Finnish morphology with a smartphone application in adult beginner level learners

The rich inflectional grammar of Finnish is often considered a challenge for second language (L2) learners. However, the inflectional variation is based on relatively systematic morphological and morphophonological rules. Smartphone applications could offer an effective way to train these rules by utilizing adaptive spaced repetition exercises. Currently there is little research on morphology learning via Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) applications in morphologically rich languages. The present study introduces a newly developed Finnish Morphology Application (FMA) that aims to teach beginner-level Finnish morphology. In a randomized controlled trial, the test group participants (n = 33) practiced Finnish morphology with the FMA during a three-week period, and their improvements were compared to those of an active control group using a general Finnish language learning application (n = 38). The practiced morphological operations comprised transparent and semi-transparent inflections. Pre- and posttests included a visual lexical decision task and a morphological production task. In comparison to the control group, the FMA group improved substantially in written morphological production skills, especially in transparent inflections. In visual lexical decision task, there was an improvement in accuracy for trained words in the FMA group, but this improvement applied to both transparent and semi-transparent inflections as well as monomorphemic nouns. In reaction times, there were no differences between the groups. Self-ratings of perceived efficacy of the FMA regarding grammar and vocabulary varied from neutral to positive. The results suggest that the FMA is particularly useful for learning inflectional production skills in Finnish by adult beginner level learners but can also be used to train word recognition.

”Tavoitteena on tarkastella luontevaa arkikeskustelua” – Vapaa, spontaani, luonnollinen ja aito (arki-)puhe fennistisissä murteita käsittelevissä väitöskirjoissa

The study examines the concept of free(ly produced) (‘vapaa’) speech. The expressions free (‘vapaa’), spontaneous (‘spontaani’), natural (‘luonnollinen’), authentic (‘aito’) and everyday (‘arki-‘) are the subject of the analysis. The research material consists of 51 doctoral dissertations dealing with dialects published in the field of Finnish language studies between 1871 and 2017, from which previously mentioned expressions have been searched qualitatively by means of close reading and mechanically by word searches. The research shows that free(ly produced) (‘vapaa’) speech can be defined in different ways and that speech produced in different speech situations appears at different contexts as both free(ly produced) and non-free(ly produced) speech. The study discusses phonetic experiments, elicitation methods, and interview and conversation as data acquisition methods and speech situations in language research. The study shows that although the scientific field has emphasized that no speech is more natural and authentic than another, in practice such assessments are made in research discourses (dissertations).

One-day listen-and-repeat training of a non-native vowel duration contrast for speakers of Namibian languages

Abstract Listen-and-repeat training has previously been successfully used to train the perception and production of non-native vowel quality and duration contrasts. This study used a one-day listen-and-repeat training paradigm for the production of a non-native vowel duration contrast, /tite – tiːte/ with no feedback or other instructions. Learning results were assessed by acoustic analysis of the produced durations, and identification of the productions by listeners with quantity contrasts in their native Finnish language. Training participants were 18 Namibian speakers of various Bantu and Khoe languages. The results showed that the majority of the speakers did not produce a consistent acoustic duration contrast between the target words. In the identification task, the listeners’ performance was at essentially chance level for almost all of the speakers. The results are discussed in terms of earlier results using the same stimuli, training design and language background.

Weight management practices, views, and experiences of adults living with poor socioeconomic circumstances and obesity: a qualitative systematic review protocol.

The objective of this review is to synthesize the best available qualitative evidence on the weight management practices, views, and experiences of adults living with poor socioeconomic circumstances and obesity. Additionally, the review aims to deepen our understanding of the common narratives of obesity according to these people. People living with poor socioeconomic circumstances are at increased risk of obesity, particularly in high-income countries, and their weight management practices (eg, weight-related behaviors) tend to be less healthy. Since prior research on socioeconomic inequalities in obesity is mostly from quantitative studies, the individual views and experiences related to weight management have been largely ignored. Thus, systematic qualitative evidence is needed on the weight management practices, views, and experiences of adults living with poor socioeconomic circumstances and obesity. Qualitative studies examining adults (aged 18 to 74 years) living with poor socioeconomic circumstances and obesity, and conducted in high- and upper-middle-income countries will be considered. The phenomenon of interest is these people's weight management practices, views, and experiences. Searches will be conducted in MEDLINE (Ovid), APA PsycINFO (Ovid), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), Scopus, Web of Science, and the Finnish health sciences database, MEDIC, restricted to the English and Finnish languages. Sources of unpublished studies and gray literature will include Google Scholar and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Two independent reviewers will screen the papers, assess methodological quality, and extract data following JBI's procedures. The meta-aggregative approach will be used for data synthesis. Confidence in the findings will be assessed using the ConQual approach. PROSPERO CRD42023407938.