Varying social roles and networks on a family farm: Evidence from Swedish immigrant letters, 1880s to 1930s

Abstract

The present study investigates patterns of language use in the ego documents written by three Swedish immigrants: Nils Blomberg (born in 1839), Mathilda Blomberg, (b. 1863), and Anton Blomberg (b. 1885), their eldest son. The empirical foundation of the investigation is a set of 32 family letters sent over a period of nearly fifty years (1885–1934) from the rural Smoky Valley in Kansas to Mathilda’s home village in Östergötland, Sweden. We analyze the writers’ lexis, discourse patterning (formulaic versus free-flowing), and re-current topics, and the social roles and networks that are manifest in their correspondence. The three writers continued to correspond in the Swedish language over the years. Our diachronic analysis of their lexis and discourse patterning reveals individual variation across the authors’ production. For example, Mathilda’s correspondence contains some evidence of heritage Swedish (i.e. Swedish that has diverged from the home country, due to geographical separation and language contact with English). Across her lifespan, Mathilda integrates some vocabulary for plants, places, and jobs that diverges from the lexis she recalls from her early years in Sweden, and she draws attention to this lexical divergence for the sake of her readers. Anton, a childhood bilingual in Swedish and English, systematically translates English lexis to Swedish in letters, presumably with the goal to bring his Kansas experiences closer to his Swedish relatives. In particular, the letters, especially those by Mathilda, reveal not only how the individuals communicate information about their social roles in rural Kansas, but also their desires to maintain the networks connecting their family farm in the U.S. to Mathilda’s home village in Sweden.