Near nativeness and stylistic lexical competence in Swedish of first and second generation Finnish immigrants to Sweden

Abstract

The present study aims to characterize the perception of stylistic nuances of lexical items in both Swedish and Finnish among members of the Sweden Finnish minority in Sweden, with special emphasis on Swedish. Data on stylistic perceptions were elicited from 77 bilingual Sweden Finns and from a Swedish and a Finnish control group. The subjects were asked to describe the connotative and stylistic meanings of 14 pairs of synonymous words in Swedish (e.g., polis—snut `police—cop') and in Finnish, using Osgood's semantic differential. The main issue was to discuss to what extent the Sweden Finns show similarity to the Swedes and/or Finns regarding their stylistic perceptions. The results of the analysis indicate that the various Sweden Finnish test groups(divided according to sex and generation) have a different level of competence in Swedish regarding the perception of stylistic nuances. Adult men differentiated significantly less for all word pairs, while adolescents and women perceived these words largely in the same way as the Swedes in the corresponding subgroups. The results are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate on immigrants and integration, and suggest that a more similar language use may indicate a higher degree of integration.

Multi-storied Lives: Global Simulation as an Approach to Developing Multiliteracies in an Intermediate French Course

“…Although four students agreed with the importance of using the title gardien, three of these students' reflections were limited to thinking referentially about this term while only one student reflected on connotations. Dewaele (2004) recaps Bijvoet's (2002) observation that language teaching is…traditionally more concerned with word phonology, morphology, lexico-syntax and denotative word meanings rather than with 'associative word meaning (consisting of connotations and stylistic properties)' … [w]hile denotations are shared by large groups of speakers, connotations are shared by particular communities of practice and are much more dynamic. (Dewaele, 2004, p. 130) Located outside of the communities of practice in which a gardien or concierge has been an important figure, FL students do not have a full range of conventionalized associations.…”

Emotion Vocabulary in Interlanguage

“…It is often said that less proficient IL speakers feel communicatively handicapped, unable to express their communicative intentions accurately in the IL (Rintell, 1990). This inability is mostly due to problems at the level of associative aspect of lexical competence, i.e., to a limited ability to perceive and use subtle stylistic nuances (Bijvoet, 2002;Hyltenstam, 1988;Preston, 1996).…”

“…It is quite possible that in some contexts, male and female learners may be socialized into slightly different speech communities. Intriguing evidence comes from a study by Bijvoet (2002) who found gender differences in stylistic lexical competence in the L2 Swedish of Finnish immigrants to Sweden. In particular, she demonstrated that adult men had more difficulties in perceiving stylistic nuances in Swedish than adolescents and women.…”

Telling Tales out of School: Assessing Linguistic Competence in Minority Language Fieldwork

“…These researchers, although investigating somewhat different combinations of linguistic variables, all subjected their tape-recordings to extensive linguistic analyses on the lexical, morphological and=or phonological levels. Alternative analyses involve discourse parameters (see Bennett & Slaughter, 1983) and the stylistic and connotative parameters of pairs of synonyms (see Bijvoet, 2002). (2) Storytelling proficiency testing: Informants are tape-recorded telling stories, which are evaluated in selected areas of competence by trained personnel.…”