Language Discourses and Contacts in the Twenty-First-Century Far North—Introduction to the Volume

Abstract

With this volume, we invite you on a trip to the Far North of Europe, to Finland and its neighbouring countries Estonia and Sweden, and across the Arctic circle to the Lapland area which stretches from northernmost Scandinavia in the west to northern Finland and North-Western Russia. This is the area in which the Saami and Finnic peoples have lived for centuries, forming language contacts and discourses that are in constant change. On the pages of this book, we will introduce you to some of the inhabitants in this area and familiarise you with their everyday linguistic practices during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We cover under-studied topics such as the linguistic situation of indigenous Saami people and the language attitudes of twenty-first-century migrants. In the chapters of the book, we will discuss individual language users’ talk about linguistic identities and their use of different languages. We will also explore their linguistic attitudes, ideologies, and ways in which their language use and their talk about language reflect their personal social relations and society at large.

1.1 About This Book

With this volume, we invite you on a trip to the Far North of Europe, to Finland and its neighbouring countries Estonia and Sweden, and across the Arctic circle to the Lapland area which stretches from northernmost Scandinavia in the west to northern Finland and North-Western Russia. This is the area in which the Saami and Finnic peoples have lived for centuries, forming language contacts and discourses that are in constant change. On the pages of this book, consisting of 10 individual chapters and this introduction, we will introduce you to some of the inhabitants in this area and familiarise you with their everyday linguistic practices during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We cover under-studied topics such as the linguistic situation of indigenous Saami people and language attitudes of twenty-first-century migrants. In the chapters of the book, we will find out how they talk about their linguistic identities and the use of different languages. We will also explore their linguistic attitudes, ideologies, and ways in which their language use and their talk about language reflect their personal social relations and society at large. The studies in this book have been selected in order to showcase the versatility of language contacts in areas that have not yet been addressed in multilingualism studies, but which offer unique insights into and broaden our understanding of the topic. The studies represent individuals with different backgrounds as well as areas with their unique cultural and geographical characteristics, including cities as well as sparsely populated rural areas. The chapters also exhibit a flexibility of methodological choices in the study of language discourses and contacts. The qualitative studies in this book have been chosen with the aim of showing the depth and richness of language discourses and contacts rather than at providing generalisations.

In this introductory chapter, we will first outline the linguistic situation in Finland (Sect. 1.2). We then briefly discuss Finnish-speaking communities in neighbouring countries (Sect. 1.3) before providing an overview of the main concepts we operate with—namely, language, language discourse, and linguistic identity (Sect. 1.4).

1.2 The Linguistic Situation in Finland

There are approximately 5.5 million inhabitants in Finland. According to the Institute for the Languages of Finland (2022), approximately 150 different first languages are spoken in the country, but according to Karlsson (2017), this listing does not include all languages, and the real number is close to 500. In addition to the national languages, Finnish and Swedish, the Constitution of Finland acknowledges that the Saami, as the country’s indigenous people, as well as the Roma and other groups (including speakers of the two national sign languages, Finnish and Finland-Swedish Sign Language), have the right to maintain and develop their own languages and cultures.

1.2.1 Two National Languages—Finnish and Swedish

The official, national languages of Finland are Finnish and Swedish. Finnish is spoken as a first language by the large majority (4.9 million people) and Swedish by 296,000 people in Finland—while globally there are approximately 9 million Swedish speakers (Institute for the Languages of Finland, 2022). Finnish municipalities are officially bilingual or monolingual in one or two of the national languages, depending on the composition of their population and the language in which residents are registered with the government. In mainland Finland, most Swedish-speaking Finns live in bilingual municipalities concentrated in the coastal areas of Uusimaa (Swe. Nyland), Varsinais-Suomi (Swe. Egentliga Finland), and Ostrobothnia (Fin. Pohjanmaa, Swe. Österbotten) (Nordics.info, 2022). Figure 1.1 shows the location of Finnish–Swedish bilingual municipalities on the coastal area (turquoise and light blue). The light area in Fig. 1.1 shows officially monolingual Finnish-speaking municipalities, whereas turquoise areas are bilingual municipalities with Finnish as the majority language and the light blue ones bilingual municipalities with Swedish as the majority language. The four northernmost municipalities (red) have significant Saami-speaking minorities, and Saami languages have official status in them. The only monolingual Swedish municipalities in Finland are on the Åland islands (dark violet), which form an autonomous region.

Fig. 1.1

(Source Wikimedia commons, public domain)

Bilingual municipalities in Finland, 2013

Finnish belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family together with Estonian (North and South Estonian), Karelian, Veps, Votic, Ingrian, Livonian, Meänkieli, and Kven. The Finnic languages are, to varying extents, mutually understandable after some studying, but differ significantly from the Saami languages which form the neighbouring branch of the Uralic language family; the rest of the language family consists of about thirty languages spoken in the northern parts of the European Russia and West Siberia as well as Hungarian spoken in Hungary and the adjacent areas. Finnish and other Finnic languages are characterised by relatively long and agglutinative word forms that result from compounding, derivational and inflectional suffixes, and word-final clitics. Syntactically, Finnish has both sentence types that resemble sentences in English and other Western European languages, and ones that differ from them in word order and other features. There is a lot of variation in how Finnish is spoken, and the standard language (see, e.g., Karlsson, 2008) is a compromise that includes words and grammatical features from all major dialects of the language.

Swedish belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is closely related to and, to a large extent, mutually understandable with the other mainland Scandinavian languages, Norwegian and Danish. Swedish varieties spoken in Finland are called Finland Swedish. Standardised Finland Swedish is very similar to standardised Sweden Swedish, and the two differ mainly in pronunciation. However, spoken Finland Swedish varieties show a large variety of dialectal features that include a lot of loan words and expressions from Finnish. Historically, Finland was a part of the Swedish kingdom for centuries, and the Swedish language has a long history of being used as an administrative language in the country even though native Swedish speakers only form a minority (ca. 5–6%) of the country’s population. Studying the other national language (Swedish for Finnish speakers and Finnish for Swedish speakers) in school is compulsory in mainland Finland, although the public opinion is turning more towards making Swedish an optional subject (see, e.g., YLE uutiset, 2013).

1.2.2 The Indigenous Saami Languages

Although many official documents regard not only the Saami people as one indigenous people but also their languages as one (‘the Saami language’), the Saami branch of the Uralic language family consists of approximately ten living languages as heterogeneous as the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. Although the Saami languages belong to the same language family with the Finnic languages such as Finnish and Estonian, and the two branches have had continuous contacts ever since they diverged from a common ancestor a couple of millennia ago, their genetic distance can be compared with that of Germanic and Romance languages, for example: Despite their common origin and geographical closeness, the Saami and the Finns, for example, are linguistically and culturally as distinct from each other as are the speakers of German and French from each other. Moreover, as the Saami languages form a geographical continuum that ranges from the central parts of Norway and Sweden to the easternmost tip of the Kola Peninsula in Russia, the individual Saami languages are usually mutually intelligible only among the neighbouring varieties.

In Finland, three entirely distinct Saami languages are spoken: The language with the most speakers in not only Finland (more than 1000 speakers) but also in Norway and Sweden (about 15,000 speakers in total) is North Saami (sámegiella), whereas Skolt Saami (sääʹmǩiõll) has some 200–300 speakers in Finland and a few speakers east of the Finnish–Russian border. The only Saami language traditionally spoken only within the Finnish territory is Aanaar (Inari) Saami (anarâškielâ; about 400 speakers), whose recent revitalisation can be considered one of the most successful examples of reversing language shift globally. However, all Saami languages are still severely or critically endangered and pose various challenges—as well as opportunities—to both language activists and scholars interested in the fascinating dynamics of minority languages.

In the present volume, special attention is given to the two most endangered Saami languages of Finland. The chapter by Jomppanen describes and discusses the beginning of Skolt Saami studies at the university level as well as how this has affected the revitalisation of the language in the eyes of the students and other members of the Skolt Saami language community. In the chapter by Mettovaara and Ylikoski, the recent Aanaar Saami revival is discussed by combining a structural approach to the variation within the contemporary language system and an analysis of the multilayer discourses that can be observed in the language ideologies of Aanaar Saami language activists. The position of North Saami in between the Nordic majority languages of Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish is discussed by Hippi.

1.2.3 English in a Multilingual Society—A Threat or an Enabler?

Although the majority of the municipalities in Finland are officially monolingual, it does not mean that the people living there are. The chapters by Hippi and Grasz in this volume discuss the language use and discourses of people residing in rural communities in Finnish Lapland, who encounter not only Finnish and Saami languages but also a variety of foreign languages brought along by the tourism business. The chapter by Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu takes us to larger cities such as Oulu (Swe. Uleåborg) in Northern Finland which is one of the country’s Swedish ‘language islands’—a small, historically rooted Swedish community in a larger Finnish-speaking municipality (see Kosunen, 2017). Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu demonstrate how Finnish, Swedish, English, and Estonian language resources are mixed in urban environments in Finland, Sweden, and Estonia.

Even though English has no official status in Finland, it is widely used in education, commerce, and public services. The majority of Finns today have a stronger command of the English language than of Swedish (Official Statistics of Finland, 2017). In the school year 2021/2022, as many as 86% of 1st graders and 98% of 5th graders studied English in school (Official Statistics of Finland, n.d.). As the examples in Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu’s chapter show, this widespread knowledge of English and its high prestige is reflected in the language use of the younger generation of Finnish speakers. English is often considered a ‘language that everybody knows’ and a self-evident choice to be used as a lingua franca for instance in working life (see Leppänen et al., 2011; Räisänen & Karjalainen, 2018; Räisänen & Kankaanranta, 2020; Laitinen et al., 2023; Lehto, in this volume)—even to the extent that Finnish speakers do not necessarily feel the need to study other foreign languages even though they have the motivation to study them (see Räisänen, in this volume). The role of English is a popular topic in public discourse; it has aroused heated discussion (Leppänen & Pahta, 2012) and continues to do so. English is viewed as an enabler and a threat: Proficiency in English allows people to engage in transnational contacts with people from different linguacultural backgrounds, while at the same time the widespread use of English for example in marketing, working life, and higher education is seen to jeopardise the viability of the Finnish language (e.g., Saarinen & Ennser-Kananen, 2020).

As discussed in the chapter by Lehto, this discourse of the self-evident role of English is not unproblematic. It can lead to problems of inclusion for both non-Finns and non-English speakers. People of non-Finnish origin often feel excluded when they are addressed in English instead of Finnish. These kinds of actions derive from the high prestige of English and people’s false assumptions such as ‘all foreigners speak English’ and ‘foreigners do not speak Finnish’—the latter of which is also demonstrated in Niemelä’s chapter. While English as a lingua franca can be highly beneficial in many domains, increasing the equality and inclusion of all participants (see Haddington et al., 2021; Iikkanen, 2017; Räisänen & Kankaanranta, 2020), Lehto shows that English is not always the polite choice in international encounters in Finland.

The increasing use of English in Finland can also cause problems for those who are not proficient in the language (see, e.g., Pitkänen-Huhta & Hujo, 2012). This applies not only to Finns, of whom approximately one in four speaks English only at an elementary level or no English at all (Official Statistics of Finland, 2017), but also to many refugees and other immigrants. The following interview extract from a pair interview conducted by the LinBo project¹ represents a case in point. The interview was conducted with two Afghani refugees who had moved to northern Finland as teenagers and lived in the country for four years at the time of the interview. In Extract 1, one of the interviewees describes situations in which people talk to him in English and he has to ask them to switch to Finnish which he is more proficient in. The interview was held in Finnish.

Extract 1

A: No, täällä päin, -kin on ollut joskus mutta eteläpäin etelässä päin esimerkiksi Helsingissä tuolla, niin, ihmiset, aina kun mä oon mennyt jossakin ne ajat- öö ne heti huomaa että, me ollaan ulkomaalaisia niin, ne heti, alkaa puhumaan, engla- englannin kielellä. Niin, semmosissa tilanteissa niin, mää yritän sanova sanoa että, me voidaan puhua suomen kielellä koska mä osaan, suomen kieltä parempi kun englantia niin.

Well here too sometimes, but in the south, for example in Helsinki—every time I go somewhere people they thin—they notice immediately that we are foreigners, so they start to speak English. So, in those situations I try to say that we can speak Finnish, because I know Finnish better than English.

In the interviewee’s age group (18–24 years), more than 80% of Finland’s residents speak English at at least an intermediate level (Official Statistics of Finland, 2017), which means that, judging from the interviewee’s description, his proficiency in the language is probably below average. Unlike for most people who were born in Finland, English is not the interviewee’s first foreign language. He had studied three languages (Pashto, Arabic, and English) in addition to his native language Farsi/Dari² and concentrated on learning Finnish after migrating to Finland. His story is typical among many involuntary migrants who may have a command of several languages that are not much appreciated in Finnish society, and who have to start learning two to three new languages when moving to the country (Lehtonen, 2015).

When asked which languages they would like to use more in their everyday life, the above-quoted interviewee names Finnish ‘Because I live in Finland and I will learn more if I use the language, which is used by everyone here’. His response can be seen to reflect a strong will to assimilate into Finnish society and connect with speakers of Finnish. Neither of the interviewees mention their native language in this context, but the second interviewee states that he would like to speak more English (‘Because it’s spoken everywhere’). The interviewees’ responses reflect the high status and wide usage of Finnish and English in Finnish society (see also Leppänen et al., 2011). Even when specifically asked about their use of their native languages, the interviewees report typically speaking Finnish to other Afghani people in Finland but switching to their native language when they run into problems of understanding.

Finland has scored high on the Multiculturalism Policy Index (Wallace et al., 2021), which implies that the country has advanced policies for supporting ethnocultural diversity. However, as Saukkonen (2013a, 2013b) has pointed out, the practices in Finland show a preference for assimilative policies rather than the two-way integration ideal. Integration is mainly seen as a task for the migrants to tackle themselves (instead of society tackling it as a whole) and if, in the process, migrants lose their ethnic identity or language, it is not viewed as a failed result of integration (Leinonen, 2022; Lehto, forthcoming). The above-discussed interview responses support Saukkonen’s view and indicate the interviewees’ attempt to assimilate into society rather than to integrate in a way that would allow them to maintain and nurture their linguistic origin.

1.3 Finnish Communities in Sweden and Estonia

In the neighbouring countries of Sweden and Estonia, Finns represent an ethnic minority group that has formed over centuries. Sweden Finns are often divided into three groups: Tornedalers, Finnish speakers, and Swedish-speaking Finns (Minority Rights Group International, n.d.). Tornedalers have lived in the north of Sweden since mediaeval times while the other two groups are a result of migration. Meänkieli (previously referred to as Tornedal Finnish) was recognised as a national minority language separate from Finnish in the year 2000 and has an estimate of 40,000–75,000 speakers (Institutet för språk och folkminnen, 2021). Finnish is also recognised as a national minority language, and approximately one out of three among the 700,000 ethnic Finns are estimated to know the Finnish language (Minoritet.se, n.d.).

In this volume, Sweden Finns are discussed in the chapter by Bijvoet and Östman, who compare Sweden Finns’ language discourses and linguistic identities to those of Dutch speakers in the same town. In the chapter by Kolu, as well as the chapter by Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu, we see reports of the fluid bilingual language use and identity representations of teenagers living in a border town. These chapters represent two very different groups of ethnic Finns in Sweden. The participants in Bijvoet and Östman’s chapter are work-related migrants representing the hundreds of people who migrated to Sweden from Finland in the 2nd half of the twentieth century to work mainly in industrial fields (see Korkiasaari & Söderling, 2003; Lainio, 1996). Migration to Sweden was highest in the 1960s and 1970s and decreased significantly in the 1980s due to the narrowing of the differences between the Finnish and Swedish economies and standards of living (Korkiasaari & Söderling, 2003). The participants in Kolu’s study represent a historically more stable group, namely transnationals from a twin town on the border of Swedish and Finnish Tornedal, an area where daily crossings of the border have been a rule rather than an exception throughout history and where people often work, go to school, or engage in hobbies in a different country than the one in which they live.

The inhabitants of the areas that are now known as Finland and Estonia have maintained contact throughout history through trade as well as migration from one side of the Gulf of Finland to the other, leaving their traces in place names as well as in some of the coastal dialects (see, e.g., Grünthal, 1998; Korkiasaari, 2008; Mägiste, 1952; Söderman, 1996). In spite of the contact, by the time literary Finnish and Estonian were established in the sixteenth century, the two languages had become clearly distinct from each other. The reasons for Finnish migration to Estonia have varied throughout the centuries. While peasant migrants in the sixteenth to eighteenth century as well as Finnish soldiers of the Swedish army in the seventeenth century are believed to have settled there permanently, academic migrants of the nineteenth century until 1939 tended to return to Finland (see Korkiasaari, 2008; Sepp, 1997). Migration from Finland to Estonia ended for a period of approximately half a century after the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1944. However, during that period, thousands of Ingrian Finns, who had priorly lived in the St Petersburg area in Russia, moved to Estonia. Generations of Finnish migrants to Estonia have been linguistically and ethnically merged into the Estonian population, and the Finns in current-day Estonia consist of two distinct groups: Ingrian Finns and recent 1st generation migrants (Frick et al., 2018; Jakobson, 2012, pp. 161–165).

Figure 1.2 shows how the number of ethnic Finns, Finnish nationals, and native Finnish speakers has changed during the past decades.

Fig. 1.2

Finns in Estonia according to Rahvaloendus.ee (n.d.) and Statistics Estonia (2022)

The numbers in Fig. 1.2 include both Ingrian Finns, who migrated to Estonia from other parts of the Soviet Union mainly in the 1950s and who typically have Estonian citizenship, and more recent migrants from Finland. The decrease in the number of ethnic Finns and native Finnish speakers is explained by the persecution of Ingrian Finns during the Soviet period, which resulted in their children mainly acquiring Estonian or, in some cases, Russian ethnic identity and mother tongue. In the past ten years, the number of Finnish citizens living in Estonia has tripled, showing a significant increase in recent migration from Finland to Estonia. The census numbers include both people who have settled in Estonia and those who live there for work and studies, often commuting between the countries and living as ‘transmigrants’, thus forming a transnational space that encompasses both countries (Jakobson et al., 2012). Finns in Estonia are discussed in the chapter by Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu, who examine the multilingual language use of Finnish students in Estonia and show how these transnationals make use of Finnish, Estonian, and English linguistic resources in their everyday life.

1.4 Language, Language Discourse, and Linguistic Identity

Understandably, the notion of ‘language’ is at the centre of this volume. How we treat the concept is of utmost importance. Here it is crucial to consider both scientific conceptualisations as well as laypeople’s understandings, since this book focuses on individuals’ language use and their voices about language. Inside the covers of this book, researchers conceptualise language mostly from various sociolinguistic perspectives. Sociolinguists’ understanding of language centres around the idea of language being subject to variation and change especially as a result of individuals’ mobility and contact with each other. Moreover, empirical sociolinguistic research has proven the need to view language as fluid and emerging in practices of translanguaging where individuals themselves do not necessarily account for the existence of borders between distinct national languages but instead draw from their existing multilingual resources for meaningful communication (Canagarajah, 2013; Li Wei, 2017; Otheguy et al., 2015). However, for laypeople, distinct languages (e.g., Finnish, English, Swedish, German, the Saami languages, and so on) function as resources for conceptualising their own lives with languages, as especially pointed out in the chapter by Bijvoet and Östman. Furthermore, in the interview excerpts in the chapters by Hippi, Räisänen, Grasz, Lehto, and Kolu, the participants talk about their language practices by naming distinct languages. This talk, as well as language use in general, is viewed in this volume as social action through which people react to and construct their social relations and the world they live in.

In this volume, the term language discourse is defined loosely as ‘a way of speaking about language’. It derives from Gee’s (2004, 2015) two notions of discourse: discourse with a small ‘d’ and Discourse with a capital ‘D’, where ‘discourse’ refers to language in use while ‘Discourse’ sets a larger societal and historical context for the language in use. That is, language discourse focuses on language(s) and derives its meaning from context. To understand language discourse is to understand society: the groups and the individuals that produce, draw on, and reconstruct the discourse. Discourses are a ‘social form of language use as well as socially shared ways of constructing the world’ (Lehto, in this volume), which means that when we analyse people’s language discourses, we also view how they not only reflect but also construct the society they live in: what they make of Finland as a linguistic community, how they see themselves and others as speakers of Finnish, Saami, Swedish, English, and other languages—and, furthermore, how they, as language users and members of society, build the linguistic landscape they live in.

Following our definition, discourses can be found through the analysis of both the themes and the linguistic build-up of the text (that is, the ‘what’ and ‘how’ people talk about a given subject—in our case, language and language use). The discourses that emerge in this volume are often ones that the reader may have encountered in public or academic texts, but the current volume gives voice to individuals, allowing them a chance to describe their linguistic life in their own words. The discourses discussed in the different chapters are mainly taken from interview data and thematic group conversations, but the chapter by Mettovaara and Ylikoski also views published discourses by language activists and professionals. Not all discourses are spoken, and in the chapter by Niemelä, we view discourses that are presented as drawings.

One of the recurring discourses in the studies is the discourse of being able to use one’s linguistic resources, of getting along with the languages one knows. Finland is seen (and constructed) by English-speaking migrants as a place where one can widely use English (Lehto, this volume). English is talked about as a ‘tool’ that has instrumental value in Finland, while Finnish is described as a language that has value in itself: It is ‘important’ as the ‘language of the country’ and seen by migrants as a gateway to belonging to society (Lehto, this volume). For native speakers, a similar discourse is found in relation to local Finnish dialects: Hippi describes in her chapter how inhabitants in a small village in Lapland align with or distance themselves from the local language variety depending on their personal history and attachment (insider vs. outsider) to the local community.

Another recurring but more negative discourse is the one of missing or limited resources. Lehto’s (in this volume) informants talk about situations and groups of people with whom one cannot use English: elderly people, one’s in-laws, or the children’s daycare. Lehto’s study also shows that not all Finns are comfortable or fluent enough to hold a conversation in English.

A negative emotion is seen in some of the drawings examined in Niemelä’s chapter, in which ‘foreigners’ are drawn as lacking the Finnish language—and sometimes any language at all—accompanied with a sad face. The sadness of not knowing Finnish links to the discourse of the importance of knowing the language which gives access to society.

When talking about limited or missing heritage language resources, especially for the Saami languages, people often voice a desire to know more of the language and a sorrow for having lost the chance to learn it as a child (Hippi, in this volume). This reflects the history of oppression and negative attitudes towards the Saami languages that have now eased or even reversed. On the other hand, no expressions of sorrow or longing to know one’s heritage language better is reported in Kolu’s chapter, which describes Sweden Finnish teenagers’ shift to a monolingual Swedish over their school years. On the contrary, when listening to an earlier recording of herself speaking Finnish, one of the informants describes it as ‘strange’ and ‘not like me at all’. This shows an acceptance of the apparently voluntary language shift in the informant’s life.

Perhaps the opposite to the discourses of limited or missing resources are the discourses about the overabundance of a language. The discourse of ‘too much English’ is a recurrent example of this. Participants in the studies reveal their negative attitude towards, for example, naming Finnish companies with English names (Hippi, in this volume). The abundant use of English in Finland is also seen as a hindrance to the learning of Finnish by migrants (Lehto, in this volume) and the learning of other foreign languages by Finns (Räisänen, in this volume), or as a problem when one would prefer to use Finnish (Extract 1; Lehto, in this volume). Another discourse of overabundance is the one regarding the obligatory studies of Swedish in school. Some of the participants in Räisänen’s study see Swedish as not being useful and describe Swedish studies as ‘a waste of time’.

Another group of discourses have to do with language contacts and language mixing. On many occasions, one hears or uses languages that do not belong to one’s strongest resources. Räisänen’s chapter discusses higher education students’ motivations for learning other foreign languages at different stages in their lives and shows that some people choose to study a foreign language (for instance Spanish or Russian) due to parental advice or a general interest in languages while some may become interested in a language through a hobby such as gaming or sports. Face-to-face contacts with speakers of different languages are not uncommon in the Far North of Europe. In northernmost Finland, people encounter and sometimes use Norwegian in the local shop and when crossing the border (Hippi, this volume). Sometimes, these language contact situations are described as a necessity and an obligation. For instance, in the Lapland tourist service, one has to know Norwegian (Hippi, in this volume). ‘Additional languages’ such as German and French are described not as a necessity but as ‘useful’ in the working life of Räisänen’s informants who work in technological fields.

Language mixing is reported in several studies in this volume, and different authors use different terms to denote it (translanguaging, code-switching, etc.). Interviewees report switching languages in a conversation when not understanding each other (Lehto, this volume) or just for the fun of it (Hippi, in this volume). Examples of language mixing in the chapter by Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu demonstrate how people fluently mix languages that are strong in their repertoire or socially relevant in their lives. A mixed-language repertoire can be used when interlocutors share the same resources with the speaker, which is true for the use of Finnish and English by younger generation Finns, for the use of Finnish, Estonian, and English by Finnish students in Estonia, and for the use of Swedish and Finnish on the border of the two countries. While Kosunen, Frick, and Kolu describe language mixing on the lexical level, Mettovaara and Ylikoski mainly focus on the grammatical mixing of two languages, Aanaar Saami and Finnish. The discourses revolving around the impact of the majority languages on Saami languages are often negative, viewing the influence as ‘unwanted’ and ‘harmful’. As Aanaar Saami is severely endangered and all its speakers are bilingual in Finnish, Finnish influence is also seen as ‘inevitable’. On the other hand, it appears that one of the major factors of the unusually successful revival of Aanaar Saami has been the extraordinary tolerance towards all speakers; as a key figure in the revitalisation movement puts it, it has been considered better to speak ‘bad’ Saami than no Saami at all (Morottaja, 2007).

Language and identity are inseparable in that language is a form of identity work. From a discursive perspective, identity is constructed in discourses that allow for certain identification possibilities (Gee, 2015; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). Language discourses are therefore means for people to enact and construct their language-based identities as language users and learners for example (see Virkkula & Nikula, 2010). Language choices as well as talk about one’s language choice can be viewed as demonstrations of one’s linguistic and social self: When using a specific language, a person positions oneself in the role of a speaker of that language (see Bucholz & Hall, 2005; Kolu, in this volume; Pennycook, 2004).

The individuals’ stories in this volume illustrate various types of identity constructions. For example, Kolu’s chapter shows how teenagers living on the Swedish side of the Finland–Sweden border in Lapland identify themselves as Finnish but perform a bilingual identity through frequent code-mixing. Kolu’s longitudinal study shows how two of the informants’ linguistic performance changes over time as the teenagers become more and more Swedish-speaking after switching schools and starting to spend more time with Swedish-speaking friends, while the other two keep performing a bilingual identity throughout the study. People not only perform but also discuss their linguistic identities. For instance, Kolu’s informants tie their linguistic identity (as Finnish- or Swedish-speaking or bilingual) to both the amount and frequency of use and proficiency in the language. Linguistic identities are, however, fluid and, as Kolu shows in her chapter, they can change even in the course of a single conversation when people reflect on their identity.

Bijvoet and Östman’s chapter demonstrates how Finnish and Dutch migrants in Sweden use certain labels and categories as the basis of their identity construction. None of the migrants want to see themselves as ‘Swedish’ but rather as ‘Finnish’, ‘Sweden Finns’, ‘Dutch’, and ‘European’. The authors discuss how ethnicity as a category is relevant for the participants, quoting Horner and Weber (2017, p. 108), according to whom ethnic identity is ‘[o]ne of the deepest layers of identity that many people feel strongly about’. Bijvoet and Östman’s data illustrate that participants themselves may strongly ascribe to essentialist identity categories (as Finns, for example), but some of their voices imply that identity is situated and negotiated in interaction and thus changing (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). The authors conclude that one’s origin does not determine the way identity is constructed in their new homeland. We see the same situation in various other chapters as well: Identity—and language discourses more broadly—are context-dependent, but they still bear traces from people’s histories and migration backgrounds.