29.3569, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Östman, Ainiala (2017)

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Subject: 29.3569, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics; Sociolinguistics: Östman, Ainiala (2017)

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Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2018 16:35:51
From: Susan Burt [smburt at ilstu.edu]
Subject: Socio-onomastics

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-3217.html

EDITOR: Terhi  Ainiala
EDITOR: Jan-Ola  Östman
TITLE: Socio-onomastics
SUBTITLE: The pragmatics of names
SERIES TITLE: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 275
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Susan Meredith Burt, Illinois State University

SUMMARY:

This volume consists of ten chapters, the first an introduction to the volume,
the rest divided between two parts, Part I, Tradition, Identity and
Transmission, and Part II, The variability of names. 

In the Introduction to the volume, Ainiala and Östman argue that a
socio-onomastics is long overdue, and that pragmatics is the route to
establishing it; names, they argue, do a great many more tasks of cultural,
social and interactional interest beyond the communicative task of referring.
Not all scholars of onomastics have been interested in the workaday uses of
names, and the field has been accused of lacking theoretical innovations;
socio-onomastics, defined as “the sociolinguistic study of names” (p.6), will
enrich the field of onomastics with methodological imports from pragmatics and
sociolinguistics. Thus, for example, while gender was once shown to be a
factor in toponymic knowledge in rural Finland, more recently, occupation and
even hobbies play more of a role.  Among the emerging types of research there
is now an “interactional onomastics” (p.10), the study of how a speaker’s
choice of toponym may depend on her assessment of the interlocutor’s origins
and access to local knowledge. Socio-onomastics holds the promise of situating
name study socially and historically, and challenging some of the romanticist
and even introspective approaches of earlier onomastics.

Chapter 2, “The transmission of toponyms in language shift societies,” by
Aud-Kirsti Pedersen, compares the transmission of place names from minority to
dominant language in three different times and places, while at the same time,
sorting out which of several different kinds of factors play a role. Pedersen
focuses on three different language shift histories, 1) villages in northern
Norway, where Norwegian replaced Sami and Kven in the 19th and 20th centuries,
2) Orkney, where Scots replaced Norn 250 years ago, and 3) northern Normandy,
where French replaced Scandinavian after 1060. Both the means of transmission
and the success of transmission of toponyms vary among these shift histories.
Factors that play a role in transmission include the duration of contact
between the two languages, the attitudes towards the minority speakers,
attitudes of the minority speakers, language policies and literacy.

In Chapter 3, “Creating identities through the choice of first names,” Emilia
Aldrin argues that naming a child is an act of identity. In choosing a name
for their child, parents do not reflect social structures or social meaning,
but rather “engage actively in the creation of certain social meanings and
structures, as well as the creating of themselves and their child as certain
kinds of social beings” (p. 46). Using both a postal survey and group
interviews in Göteborg, Aldrin collected over 600 parents’ narratives of their
choosing a name for their child. Her analysis revealed four axes of values
which parents seem to use to inform their choices: 1) traditional-modern, 2)
common-original, 3) pragmatic-aesthetic, and 4) foreign-international-Swedish.
Characteristics of names are what acquire social meaning, in that they are
“connected to certain social values, stances, and modes of thought” (p.51).
Thus, a parent who chooses a traditional Swedish name for a child can be
interpreted as positioning her/himself as valuing normality and authenticity,
rather than trendiness or Anglo-American influence. Names may be chosen that
associate parents and child with lifestyle values—literature or sports—or that
dissociate from certain characteristics. Spelling choices or certain types of
segments may contribute to this social positioning process; stops in a name
(such as /k/ in ‘Jack’) may facilitate an interpretation of ‘tough’ on the
aesthetic axis. Parents’ self-positioning through expressing values for name
characteristics, however, has a social dynamic; in interaction with other
parents in the group interviews, consideration for the face of other parents
may mitigate or downplay the strength of self-expression. Name-givers and
name-hearers may also differ in their interpretations of the values associated
with names and their characteristics, bringing further ‘play’ into the system.

Chapter 4, “Naming of children in Finnish and Finnish-Norwegian families in
Norway,” by Gulbrand Alhaug and Minna Saarelma, focuses on naming practices of
Finnish minority and bicultural families in Norway, which of course shares a
border with Finland, and thus, has seen long-term linguistic contact as well
as intermarriage. Population bureau records of 2588 children were accessed,
including 433 families in which both parents were Finnish (FF), 1321 families
in which the mother was Finnish and the father Norwegian (FN), and 834 in
which the mother was Norwegian and the father Finnish (NF).  First names
(where a child might well receive two names at birth) are divided into
categories Finnish, Norwegian and ‘other.’ In all three types of families,
interestingly enough, the ‘other’ category prevails; however, several trends
emerge: parents are more inclined to give boys ethnically conservative names,
and to give girls names from the ‘other’ category. In bicultural families, it
is the ethnicity of the mother that is most likely to prevail in name choices,
although the authors also give a variety of examples of patterns of
compromise. 

In Chapter 5, “Names in Contact: Linguistic and social factors affecting
exonyms and translated names,” author Jarno Raukko sets up a typology of
transmission/translation/transliteration/adaptation processes that names
(toponyms and anthroponyms) may undergo as they are taken into languages other
than their language of origin. An endonym is a name written and pronounced as
native speakers of the place write and pronounce it. An exograph respells the
name for speakers of the uptaking language: Raukko gives the example of the
Norwegian spelling Moskva for the Russian capital. An exophone preserves
original spelling but speakers of the uptaking language pronounce the name
differently, as in English speakers’ pronunciations of Paris and Berlin, while
a full exonym changes both spelling and pronunciation, as in the French
Londres for London. Raukko discusses the significance of exonym creation and
use, and finds it ambiguous: exonym creation might signify, on one hand, that
the referent of the name is important, culturally and/or socially, to
speakers, or on the other hand, that speakers are unfamiliar with the
referent, including with the fact that an endonym is available. The use of a
foreign language’s endonym in one’s own language, however, is also fraught: if
I as an English speaker were to insist on pronouncing Paris as Paree, I could
deservedly be criticized for trying to flaunt—or make claims to—some kind of
elite cosmopolitanism. Raukko’s 30-respondent survey further demonstrates the
difficulty of generalizing significance of exonym use or choice. Given the
option to exonymize the names of the British princes Charles and William
(should either of them eventually become King), the majority of the Finns
surveyed decided that they would not want to create a Finnish exonym (Kaarle
or Vilhelm): “English is familiar enough so no new exonyms for English names
are needed” (p. 121). On the other hand, these Finnish respondents want to
retain use of the Finnish exonym Tukholma for the Swedish capital Stockholm,
and prefer to retain Peking for the Chinese city, although they know that
Beijing is now standard: familiarity may ultimately count for more than
exoticism in naming.

The second part of the volume is entitled “The variability of names.” In
Chapter 6, “Orienting to norms: Variability in the use of names for Helsinki,”
Tehri Ainiala and Hanna Lappalainen explore Helsinkians’ use of and attitudes
towards names for the Finnish capital city: besides Helsinki and Helsingfors,
both Hesa and Stadi are used by speakers today. Ainiala and Lappalainen have
brought to bear both questionnaire data and focus group interviews in order to
examine the self-reports and spontaneous uses of these variants by a variety
of Helsinkians, both those native to the city and those who have migrated
there from elsewhere in Finland. The results, not surprisingly, are
complicated: while no speaker denies ever using ‘Helsinki,’ different
stereotypes abound as to who uses ‘Hesa’ and ‘Stadi,’ two
late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century slang variants. ‘Hesa’ is stereotyped
as ‘peasant’ usage, and ‘Stadi’ as urban slang, but outside the city, using
‘Hesa’ “suggests a Helsinkian background and a Helsinkian way of talking” (p.
141); in other words, Helsinki natives also use ‘Hesa.’ ‘Stadi’ also is
reported to be used by both natives and non-natives of the city: 12 of the 32
participants use this variant, seven of them city natives, five of them born
outside the city but living there now. However, in the interviews, the
researchers note that the only spontaneous spoken uses of ‘Hesa’ were by
non-natives to the city, and the only spontaneous uses of ‘Stadi’ were by
those born in the city. Why, then, do speakers self-report the use of the
other variant? The researchers argue that self-presentation plays a role here,
as does a kind of communication accommodation (Giles, Coupland and Coupland
1991): speakers may choose a variant that is typically ascribed to what they
perceive as the identity group of their interlocutor, rather than that
associated with their own.

Chapter 7, “Place names in contact: The use of Finnish place names in Swedish
contexts in Helsinki,” by Maria Vidberg, continues the discussion of place
names within the city of Helsinki. In this short chapter, Swedish speakers,
who are in the minority in the city, are the focus: 24 Swedish speakers took
part in focus-group interviews, from which both usage data and metalinguistic
comments emerge. Vidberg sees three types of Finnish place-name use in Swedish
contexts of talk: 1) the use of a Finnish name rather than a presumably
available Swedish equivalent, 2) the use of a hybrid name, with both Swedish
and Finnish elements, and the parallel use of both names.  While some Finnish
names (especially commercial names) may have no Swedish equivalents, other
Finnish names may come more readily to mind, may be thought to be more
recognizable to an interlocutor, or may be shorter. The close resemblance
between Finnish –katu and Swedish –gatan, ‘street,’ also plays a likely role
in the creation of hybrid forms.

In Chapter 8, “Attitudes towards globalized company names,” Lelia Mattfolk
assesses the attitudes of Swedish-speaking citizens of Finland towards the use
of English elements in company names; specifically, do they perceive common
and proper nouns differently? Communities in Finland may be designated as
Finnish-speaking, Swedish-speaking or bilingual. While the small town of
Närpes is now officially bilingual, it was monolingual Swedish up until 2015.
Thus Mattfolk chose it as a site for investigating attitudes towards English
elements in Finland Swedish. Before 1970, there were no commercial names with
English elements in Närpes; now more than 30% have some English. While some
residents neither understand nor pronounce the English elements, the
interviewees for this study seem not to mind them. One practical advantage is
that choosing an English name avoids the difficulties of choosing among
Finnish, Swedish or both; speakers in the focus groups, however, did not see
English commercial names as posing a threat to Swedish—one even compared
naming one’s business to naming one’s child, a personal decision. In general,
the participants see commercial naming choices as different from the choice to
use an English loanword, although Mattfolk points out that commercial names
could provide a “back door” for allowing more English elements into Finland
Swedish.  

 Väinö Syrjälä tackles a similar question in Chapter 9, “Naming businesses—in
the context of bilingual Finnish cityscapes,” using the framework of
linguistic landscapes. While official signs such as street signs or signs on
public buildings must be bilingual in Finnish and Swedish in officially
bilingual municipalities, commercial signage is less regulated; thus, language
choice in a commercial sign may have communicative, indexical and symbolic
functions. A polity is considered bilingual in Finland if either 8% of the
population there or 3000 people speak the minority language. But foreign
languages, such as English, are not precluded or proscribed. Thus, it is
frequently the case that a Finnish linguistic landscape will show Finnish and
English as both more predominant than Swedish.  Syrjälä compares the
commercial signage, not so regulated, in two municipalities, Kaunianen,
bilingual but majority Finnish-speaking, and Karis, bilingual, but majority
Swedish-speaking, with the assumption that the commercial names will “reflect
the bilingualism in the communities” (p. 193). Three language choice
strategies are differentially distributed between the two communities. The
first of these, to choose signage only in the local dominant language, is used
in 58% of the signs in the Finnish-dominant community, but only in 30% of the
signs in the Swedish-dominant community. The second strategy, to use both
languages in parallel, is used only in 10% of the signs in the
Finnish-dominant town, but in 34% of the signs in the Swedish-dominant town;
some other language, such as English, French or Italian, is used 32% of the
time in the Kaunianen, and 36% in Karis. These results seem not very different
from similar investigations in other Finnish towns and cities, and Syrjälä
notes, “Even if the national languages of Finland are de jure equal, Swedish
is de facto a minority language in a larger national context” ( p. 199).

In the final chapter, “The perception of Somali place names among immigrant
Somali youth in Helsinki,” Terhi Ainiala and Mia Halonen situate their study
in “folk onomastics,” which focuses on speakers’ perceptions of names and name
usage. In this case, the perceptions of both Somali immigrants and Finnish
natives on Somali-influenced names in Finland come under examination. A number
of Somali immigrants live in an eastern section of Helsinki; Finnish speakers
have unofficially named the area Mogadishu, and called one street Mogadishu
Avenue (there is also a neighborhood in Helsinki unofficially named
Bangladesh); the authors point out that such secondary toponyms can be found
in any number of European (and North American) cities. Despite the racist
discourses from which such names emerge, the authors’ interviews with 5 Somali
teens show that these younger speakers either do not perceive the racism or
choose not to interpret the name as racist. Slightly older Somali interviewees
“say they do not know anyone with a Somali background who would be insulted by
the usage of the name” (p. 213); some imply that the immigrants themselves are
responsible for the naming, making the name a good candidate for reclamation. 

EVALUATION

The volume as a whole provides an interesting and refreshing view of
onomastics; the geographical focus on Finland and its Nordic neighbors brings
the unexpected benefit of a view of the linguistic diversity, language
contacts, and ongoing globalization that have shaped one area of the world.
The researchers succeed in bringing pragmatic and sociolinguistic methods into
onomastics: the productive use of focus group interviews plays a role in
recent research on the pragmatics and semantics of address (Clyne, Norrby and
Warren 2009)—its importation into onomastics seems a natural extension.
Pragmatic and sociolinguistic notions such as indexicality, linguistic
landscape, and folk linguistics all play a role, and allow a richness of data
interpretation in several chapters. Conversation Accommodation Theory also
makes an appearance, though its use strikes me as possibly less
well-motivated. Similarly, the discussions of child-naming practices in the
chapters by Aldrin and by Alhaug and Saarelma approach the topic
sociolinguistically using public birth records in a manner similar to that of
Lieberson (2000), who takes a sociological and cultural-historical approach to
U.S. American naming practices. The similarities in results—both find more
ethnic conservatism in the naming of boys than of girls—lead me to think that
an integration of onomastics into other linguistic sciences should indeed take
a sociolinguistic/pragmatics route, as this volume proposes. Socio-onomastics
should clearly prove of interest to scholars of names and naming, but also to
those in pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

REFERENCES

Clyne, Michael, Catrin Norrby, and Jane Warren. 2009. Language and Human
Relations: Styles of Address in Contemporary Language. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 
 
Giles, Howard, Justine Coupland and Nikolas Coupland. 1991.  Contexts of
Accommodation.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Lieberson, Stanley. 2000. A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture
Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Susan Meredith Burt is Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at
Illinois State University. She is interested in all manner of sociopragmatic
issues, particularly the pragmatics and (im)politeness of address. Her first
venture into onomastics was ''Naming, Re-Naming and Self-Naming among
Hmong-Americans,'' in the journal Names 57:4 (2009).





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