Abstract
In this article, we analyse the construction of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in the aftermath of gaining independence, a traumatic civil war and during the construction of a new republican polity based on regulated parliamentarism in 1917–1919. We take a multi-sited and historically informed approach to the dynamics of political discourse at the parliamentary level, analysing the discursive cycles of people, nationality and nation. We demonstrate the interconnectedness of language policy discourses with historically and spatially multi-sited and highly complex contexts and show how language policy confrontations can add important dimensions to increase our understanding of power struggles concerning other aspects of politics. Both sides of the debate utilized a set of nationalistic discourses, derived from the nineteenth century and reactivated by the discursive trends of the post-war situation. These discourses reinforced the ideas of national self-determination and the opening of politics to the people at large—though with a set of limitations to majority democracy. Indeed, the language paragraphs of the Finnish republican constitution of 1919 can be seen as a further set of minority provisions needed in search said ideals and reconstruction of normalcy after a crisis.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Debate turns are referred to by first initial and last name of speaker, party abbreviation, and date.
References
Autio, V.-M. (1998). Setälä, Emil Nestor (1864–1935). Kansallisbiografia. http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/500/. Accessed 12 Oct 2016.
Blommaert, J. (Ed.). (1999). The debate is open. In Language ideological debates (pp. 3–38). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Blommaert, J. (2006). Language policy and national identity. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy (pp. 238–254). Oxford: Blackwell.
Canagarajah, S., & De Costa, P. (2016). Introduction: Scales analysis, and its uses and prospects in educational linguistics. Linguistics and Education, 34, 1–10.
Engman, M. (2016). Språkfrågan. Finlandssvenskhetens uppkomst 1812–1922. Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland.
Gal, S. (2006). Contradictions of standard language in Europe: Implications for the study of publics and practices. Social Anthropology, 14(2), 163–181.
Halonen, M., Ihalainen, P., & Saarinen, T. (2015). Diverse discourses in time and space. Historical, discourse analytical and ethnographic approaches to multi-sited language policy discourse. In M. Halonen, P. Ihalainen & T. Saarinen (Eds), Language policies in Finland and Sweden. Interdisciplinary and multisited comparisons (pp. 3–28). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Hämäläinen, P. K. (1978). Luokka ja kieli vallankumouksen Suomessa. Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura.
Hult, F. M. (2010). Analysis of language policy discourses across the scales of time and space. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 202, 7–24.
Hult, F. (2015). Making policy connections across scales using nexus analysis. In F. Hult (Eds.), Research methods in language policy and planning: A practical guide (pp. 217–231). Chichester: Wiley.
Hult, F., & Hornberger, N. (2016). Revisiting orientations in language planning: Problem, right, and resource as an analytical heuristic. Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe, 33(3), 30–49.
Hult, F., & Pietikäinen, S. (2014). Shaping discourses of multilingualism through a language ideological debate. The case of Swedish in Finland. Journal of Language and Politics, 13(1), 1–20.
Hyvärinen, M. (2003). Valta. In M. Hyvärinen, J. Kurunmäki, K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen (Eds.), Käsitteet liikkeessä. Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria (pp. 63–113). Tampere: Vastapaino.
Ihalainen, P. (2015). The 18th-century traditions of representation in a new age of revolution: History politics in the Swedish and Finnish parliaments, 1917–1919. Scandinavian Journal of History, 40(1), 70–96.
Ihalainen, P. (2017). The springs of democracy: National and transnational debates on constitutional reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish parliaments, 1917–1919. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. https://doi.org/10.21435/sfh.24.
Ihalainen, P., & Saarinen, T. (submitted). Bringing language research, intellectual history and political history together in the analysis of parliamentary debates as a nexus.
Ihalainen, P., & Saarinen, T. (2015). Constructing ‘Language’ in language policy discourse: Finnish and Swedish legislative processes in the 2000s. In M. Halonen, P. Ihalainen & T. Saarinen (Eds), Language policies in Finland and Sweden. Interdisciplinary and multi-sited comparisons (pp. 29–56). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Ihalainen, P., Saarinen, T., Nikula, T., & Pöyhönen, S. (2011). Aika kielipolitiikassa. Päivälehtien nettikeskustelujen historiakäsitysten analyysi. Kasvatus & Aika, 5(3), 18–38. http://www.kasvatus-ja-aika.fi/dokumentit/aika_kielipolitiikassapaivalehtien_nettikeskustelujen_historiakasitysten_analyysi_3009111039.pdf. Accessed 18 April 2018.
Johnson, D. C. (2013a). Language policy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Johnson, D. C. (2013b). Positioning the language policy arbiter. Governmentality and footing in the school district of Philadelphia. In J. W. Tollefson (Ed.), Language policies in education: Critical issues (2nd ed., pp. 116–136). New York: Routledge.
Johnson, D. C., & Ricento, T. (2015). Methodologies of language policy research. In M. Bigelow (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of educational linguistics (pp. 38–49). New York: Routledge.
Kaplan, R. B., & Baldauf, R. B. (1997). Language planning from practice to theory. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Karlsson, F. (2014). E.N. Setälä kielipoliitikkona. Virittäjä, 118(2), 281–291.
Koselleck, R. (2006). Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der politischen und sozialen Sprache. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Latomaa, S., & Nuolijärvi, P. (2002). The language situation in Finland. Current Issues in Language Planning, 3(2), 95–202.
Lemberg, M. (1999). Procopé, Hjalmar Johan (1889–1954) Kansallisbiografia. http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/952/. Accessed 15 April 2017.
Lim, J.-H. (2010). Victimhood nationalism and history reconciliation in East Asia. History Compass, 8(1), 1–10.
McCarty, T. (2011). Entry into conversation. Introducing ethnography and language policy. In T. McCarty (Ed.), Ethnography and language policy (pp. 1–28). Routledge: London.
Meinander, H. (2016). Nationalstaten. Finlands svenskhet 1922–2015. Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland.
Mortimer, K. S., & Wortham, S. (2015). Analyzing language policy and social identification across heterogeneous scales. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35, 160–172.
Pennycook, A. (2006). Postmodernism in language policy. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy: Theory and method (pp. 60–76). Malden: Blackwell.
Pocock, J. G. A. (2009). Political thought and history: Essays on theory and method. Cambridge: CUP.
Pöyhönen, S., & Saarinen, T. (2015). Constructions of bilingualism in Finnish Government programmes and a newspaper discussion site debate. Current Issues in Language Planning, 16(4), 392–408.
Ricento, T. (2000). Historical and theoretical perspectives in language policy and planning. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(2), 196–213.
Ricento, T. (2008). Researching historical perspectives on language, education, and ideology. In K. King (Ed.), Research methods in language and education (2nd ed., Vol. 10, pp. 41–54)., Encyclopedia of language and education New York: Springer.
Ricento, T. (2014). Thinking about language: What political theorists need to know about language in the real World. Language Policy, 13(4), 351–369.
Ricento, T., & Hornberger, N. H. (1996). Unpeeling the onion: Language planning and policy and the ELT professional. TESOL Quarterly, 30(3), 401–427.
Savski, K. (2016). State language policy in time and space: Meaning, transformation, recontextualisation. In E. Barakos (Eds.), Discursive approaches to language policy (pp. 51–70). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schiffman, H. F. (1996). Linguistic culture and language policy. New York: Routledge.
Scollon, R. (2005). Lighting the stove. Why habitus isn’t enough. In R. Wodak (Eds.), A new agenda in (critical) discourse analysis (pp. 101–117). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2004). Nexus analysis. Discourse and the emerging Internet. New York: Routledge.
Silverstein, M. (1996). Monoglot ‘standard’ in America: Standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony. In Don Brenneis (Eds.), The matrix of language: Contemporary linguistic anthropology (pp. 284–306). Boulder: Westview Press.
Skinner, Q. (2002). Visions of politics (Vol. 1)., Regarding method CUP: Cambridge.
Spolsky, B. (2004). Language policy. Cambridge: CUP.
Steinmetz, W., Freeden, M., & Fernández-Sebastián, J. (2017). Conceptual history in the European space. New York: Berghahn.
Steinmetz, W., Gilcher-Holtey, I., & Haupt, H.-G. (2013). Writing political history today. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
Stenius, H. (2003). Kansalainen. In M. Hyvärinen, J. Kurunmäki, K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen (Eds.), Käsitteet liikkeessä. Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria (pp. 309–362). Tampere: Vastapaino.
Vares, V. (1999). Estlander, Ernst (1870–1949). Kansallisbiografia. http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/kb/artikkeli/2203/. Accessed 20 May 2017.
Whatmore, R. (2016). What is intellectual history?. Cambridge: Polity.
Wiley, T. G. (2006). The lessons of historical investigation: Implications for the study of language policy and planning. In T. Ricento (Ed.), An introduction to language policy: Theory and method (pp. 135–152). Malden: Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Saarinen, T., Ihalainen, P. Multi-sited and historically layered language policy construction: parliamentary debate on the Finnish constitutional bilingualism in 1919. Lang Policy 17, 545–565 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9474-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9474-6