FINSSE-10 (2022)
The Role of English Today: Attitudes, Priorities, Ideologies, etc.
University of Jyväskylä
August 18th and 19th, 2022
10th Biennial Meeting of The Finnish Society for the Study of English (FINSSE)
Professor of English, Grand Valley State University, USA
University Lecturer (Docent), University of Helsinki
Kathryn's research examines the relationships between language, place, and identity; and the ways in which linguistic landscapes affect language awareness and attitudes about regional dialects. She is author of Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (2017, University of Wisconsin Press), which examines the influence of Finnish in a particular North American variety of English. Her plenary address will cover attitudes and perceptions on this variety, including interview data from speakers.
Elizabeth's research includes a focus on attitudes and ideals of correctness in global varieties of English. She is author of Making Sense of "Bad English": An introduction to language attitudes and ideologies (2019, Routledge - open access); and editor of the journal Ampersand (Elsevier). Her plenary address will cover contemporary ideologies and global varieties of English, based on work for a forthcoming book.
Professor of Translation Studies, University of Eastern Finland
Maarit specialises in translation and technology. Her recent work includes the Horizon-funded project MeMAD (Methods for Managing Audiovisual Data) investigating uses and attitudes towards machine translation. She also co-chairs a Working Group in the EU-funded network LITHME (Language In The Human-Machine Era). The topic of her plenary address will follow shortly.
Plenary titles and abstracts (click to expand)
Kathryn Remlinger
Discursively Reimagining Finnishness in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
Over the past two decades, a significant body of research has examined how languages and varieties become enregistered, where certain linguistic features are recognizable and carry certain social meanings that link language users to specific places and particular cultural values and practices (E.g., Agha 2005, Beal 2009, Dong 2010, Johnstone and Andrus 2006, Remlinger 2009, among others). One enregistered variety of American English known as Yooper or Yooper talk is spoken predominantly in the northwestern region of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This variety emerged in the early 1900s as a result of language contact among varieties of American and British English, predominantly American English from the East Coast and Midwest and Cornwall, respectively, Finnish, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Anishinaabemowin–the language of the Indigenous Ojibwe, among others. Awareness of a localized variety took hold in the mid 1900s. Today, attitudes about the variety reflect language ideologies about standard and non-standard usage, language use in education, dialect morbidity, as well as perceptions about speakers and what it means to be ‘local’.
In this presentation I examine these ideologies in relation to values of being Finnish American and Finnishness and how these values are communicated through a range of discursive practices in both private and public contexts, including the classroom, tourism marketing materials and souvenirs, news media, the linguistic landscape, conversation, advertisements, jokes, and song lyrics. Data are drawn from interviews, archival data, and multimodal sources including websites, social media, and newspapers. Results demonstrate that language ideologies reinforce values tied to Finnishness and a localized Finnish American identity and thereby reimagine certain communities as “Finnish”. Central to these ideologies is the idea that identity, place, and language are inextricably linked.
References
Agha, A. (2005). Voice, footing, enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 15(1), 38-59.
Beal, J. C. (2009). “You’re Not from New York City, You’re from Rotherham”: Dialect and Identity in British Indie Music. Journal of English Linguistics, 37(3), 223-240.
Dong, J. (2010). The enregisterment of Putonghua in practice. Language & Communication, 30(4), 265-275.
Johnstone, B. (2017). Characterological figures and expressive style in the enregisterment of linguistic variety. In in C. Montgomery & E. Moore (eds.), Language and a sense of place: Studies in language and region. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 283-300.
Remlinger, K. (2009). Everyone up here: Enregisterment and identity in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. American Speech, 84(2), 118-137.
Elizabeth Peterson
Decolonizing English studies in the 21st century: Let’s discuss(,) Finland
Several academic disciplines are making strides in the current era toward decolonization of their respective curricula, including moves to increase representation of historically marginalized groups among students and scholars, as well as transforming and questioning discipline-specific foundational principles (see, e.g., Wimpenny et al 2021).
In Finland, English has been an academic discipline for some 200 years (Pahta 2008). During these two centuries, the English language has transformed from being a provincial and colonial language to achieving far-reaching colonization, followed by an unprecedented rise as global lingua franca. Given the fact that the English language achieved its current status through colonization, coupled by the fact that it is widely perceived as a hegemonic threat to linguistic diversity, offers not only a unique opportunity but also a responsibility to English scholars to address and redress these issues through our teaching and research.
In this presentation, I aim to open up discussion of processes and possibilities afforded to English scholars in Finland, drawing from previous work (e.g., Peterson 2020; 2022) as well as upcoming research. A pivotal argument of the presentation is that by engaging in, rather than eschewing the obvious culpabilities of our field, we as scholars of English ensure our relevance and currency in academia, for our students as well as through our scientific contributions.
References
Pahta, Päivi. 2008. The History of English Studies in Finland. In B. Engler and R. Haas (eds.) European English Studies: Contributions towards the History of a Discipline Vol. II. Leicester: The English Association, for ESSE, 15–41.
Peterson, Elizabeth. 2020. Making Sense of “Bad English”: An introduction to language attitudes and ideologies. Routledge.
Peterson, Elizabeth. 2022. Views on “Good English” and “Nordic Exceptionalism” in Finland. In Alexander Onysko and Peter Siemund, eds. Englishes in a Globalized World: Exploring Contact Effects on Other Languages. Frontiers in Communication – Language Sciences. Epub 803922. Open access https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2022.803922/full
Katherine Wimpenny, Jos Beelen, Karine Hindrix, Virginia King & Ellen Sjoer. 2021. Curriculum internationalization and the ‘decolonizing academic’, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2021.2014406
Maarit Koponen
Translating humans and machines: roles of language professionals and technology
Recent advances in machine translation have brought many changes in the language industry. New technology based on neural networks has achieved marked improvements in machine translation quality, and largely superseded earlier machine translation approaches. Improved quality and easier usability, in turn, has led to increasing use of machine translation both in everyday settings and in professional translation workflows. The machines are also entering into areas where automation has previously been considered unlikely, such as literary translation. As machine translation systems become more interactive and adaptive, they also blur the distinction between human and material agents of translation (Cadwell, O’Brien and Teixera 2018), and challenge our understanding of authorship and translatorship (Koponen, Nyqvist & Taivalkoski-Shilov forthcoming).
The technological developments have even led some to claim that neural machine translation will soon make human translators – and even language learning – obsolete. In this talk, I examine the use of machine translation in two different situations. The first involves using machine translation to provide multilingual information in situations where human translation may not be feasible. Based on recent work (Nurminen & Koponen 2020; Koponen & Nurminen forthcoming), I discuss how this practice can support linguistic accessibility, and how various situational factors enable or limit such use. The second relates to machine translation as a tool in professional settings. Drawing on work on post-editing (Koponen 2016) and recent insights gained through the working group "Language work, language professionals" of the EU COST Action "Language in the Human-Machine Era" (https://lithme.eu), I discuss how professional translators use and interact with machine translation and how this has impacted the profession. Through these discussions, I aim to provide a nuanced view of the roles of humans and machines in translation.
References
Cadwell, Patrick, Sharon O’Brien & Carlos Teixeira, C. S. C. (2018). Resistance and accommodation: factors for the (non-) adoption of machine translation among professional translators. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 26(3), 301–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1337210
Koponen, Maarit & Mary Nurminen. (forthcoming/2022). Risk management for content delivery via raw machine translation. To appear in: Winters, Marion et al. (eds), Communicating across languages in times of technological change - Innovations in translation and interpreting research, practice and training. Bloomsbury.
Koponen, Maarit, Sanna Nyqvist & Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov. (forthcoming/2022). Translating with technology: How digitalisation affects authorship and copyright of literary texts. To appear in: James Hadley et al. (eds) Using Technologies for Creative Text Translation. Routledge.
Nurminen, Mary, and Maarit Koponen. 2020. Machine translation and fair access to information. Translation Spaces 9(1), 150–169. https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.00025.nur
Advice panel
FINSSE 10 will include an advice panel, where senior academics give some prepared advice, followed by an open floor discussion. The panel's theme at this conference is academic publishing. All delegates are welcome to ask questions and contribute to the discussion.
In addition to their specific experience below, all our panelists have significant experience guiding junior colleagues and doctoral researchers in the process of academic publishing.
Julia Kuznetski, Professor of English, Tallinn University, Estonia
Prof Kuznetski is a member of the editorial board of Lexington Books series ‘Ecocritical Theory and Practice’.
Dr. Elizabeth Peterson (Docent), University Lecturer of English, University of Helsinki
Dr Peterson is an associate editor for Ampersand (Elsevier). She has also co-edited a special issue for the Journal of Pragmatics (Elsevier).
Dr. Robert Lawson, Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics, Birmingham City University, UK
Dr Lawson has been editor and co-editor of numerous edited volumes. He also has experience of publishing outside of traditional academic contexts.
Kathryn Remlinger, Professor of English, Grand Valley State University, USA
Prof. Kathryn Remlinger was associate editor of Teaching American Speech (2017-18), and is a reviewer for American Speech (Duke University Press).
Call for papers
The call deadline has now passed. The call below is maintained for later reference by all.
The 10th biannual meeting of the Finnish Society for the Study of English (FINSSE-10) will be hosted by the Department of Language and Communication Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, on August 18th and 19th, 2022.
We welcome contributions on the role of English today. The field is open, we welcome submissions from any area of English studies, and at any stage (planning stage, in progress, completed).
Within the accepted submissions, we hope to draw out some that relate to attitudes, priorities and ideologies, for example attitudes towards localised varieties of English, priorities in language education and translation, ideologies in English language education practice, and literatures in varieties of English. We hope to showcase work on these themes, but, as above we are accepted submissions in any area of English studies, and from diverse sub-disciplinary approaches, including education, politics, gender studies, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, literary studies and translation studies.
We invite proposals for paper presentations and posters. Paper presentations will be allocated 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Posters will be on display for the duration of the conference, and a 30 minute session is allocated for questions and comments in the programme.
The maximum length of the proposals is 300 words, excluding references. The proposals are submitted via the form below.
Programme & abstracts, conference dinner
The programme includes three plenary presentations, several parallel paper sessions, a poster session, and other networking opportunities. A novel addition to the programme is an open collaborative discussion session, to probe for possible joint collaborations between the different English subjects in Finland.
The programme is here (when viewing on mobile, we advise installing the Google Spreadsheets app). The book of abstracts is here (PDF).
The PhD student meeting takes place on August 17th. Its purpose is to offer a forum on a national level for PhD students to network, discuss their projects and find inspiration and support. Further details of this are to follow.
The conference dinner will be in Ravintola Shalimar - Keskusta on Thursday, August 18 at 6 pm (Hannikaisenkatu 27-29). NOTE: this is not the Shalimar in the train station - see the conference map below for precise location. The menu for the conference dinner is available here. Please register to the conference dinner at the same time as the conference. At that point you will only need to select the type of dinner you want to have. We will contact the conference delegates in August for the selection of the dishes.
Celebrating FINSSE
The forthcoming conference is the 10th in the series with the 1st conference held over 20 years ago in 2001. It is thus time to commemorate the breadth and depth of English studies presented during this era and to celebrate the research community centered around English studies with a gaze into the future.
To commemorate the occasion, we ask you to send us your memories and experiences from past conferences. They can be anecdotes, pictures, letters, short videos etc., anything that offers the conference participants glimpses into the past. Your contributions will be made into a visual show that will be displayed throughout the conference.
Please send your contributions to Helen Mäntymäki by e-mail by August 1, 2022.
Registration and fees
The registration fee is 70 euros for regular participants and 40 euros for students. For those between jobs or otherwise unable to claim back their costs, there is no fee. When registering as a PhD Student / PhD researcher , proof of student status (e.g. student ID card or statement from an academic supervisor) must be presented in person at the conference.
When registering to the conference you can also pay to join as a member of FINSSE. This is 20€, or 10€ for students. We recommend membership for all participants, and researchers, higher education teachers and students of English in general.
The registration is now open. Registration and payments for the conference should be completed via the online registration system. Registration is required for ALL persons attending the conference.
Payment
The following payment methods are available: credit card, PayPal, MobilePay, and online bank payment for Finnish customers.
Kindly note that it is not possible to save data in the registration form: registration and payment must be completed in one session. Therefore, ensure that you are ready to make your payment immediately upon completion of the registration form. Receipts for credit card and online bank payments are automatically issued to the email address given upon registration.
Privacy Policy
By registering to this event you accept that the personal information you provide will be used by the hosting organization(s) in connection with the administration of the event and may be shared with the service providers when necessary. For more information about processing your personal data, please see the university’s Privacy Notice: Congresses and events & Online payments service
Important dates
May 5, 2022 Abstract notification
August 4, 2022 Registration deadline
August 17, 2022 PhD student meeting
August 18-19, 2022 Conference
Venue and accommodation
(Both maps below are interactive - click and drag for more detail)
Main venue: Ruusupuisto, Alvar Aallon katu 9, 40014 Jyväskylä
Annotated map of Jyväskylä incl. venue, discounted hotels, train station, and Ravintola Shalimar (conf. dinner)
(See 'Accommodation' section below for details of special rates)
If this map doesn't display properly, click this link.
Accommodation (and special rates)
Jyväskylä has a wide range of hotels to choose from, from hostels offering budget accommodation to cosy boutique hotels and a number of well-furnished quality hotels. There are also many options available through Airbnb, but please be aware that some universities or funding bodies do not allow reimbursement for Airbnb bookings.
Block reservations and special rates
We have made block reservations and asked for special rates for the conference participants for 17-19 August in the hotels featured below. For these prices, please take a note of the given deadline, use the hotel-specific discount code, and contact the hotel directly (booking agencies do not recognize the discount code). Please note that there is a limited number of special rate rooms available. First come, first served. Booking well in advance is recommended.
Hotel Alba, Ahlmaninkatu 4 (discount code: FINSSE)
Alba is situated next to the University’s Mattilanniemi campus, a 5-minute walk from the conference venue Ruusupuisto. away from the busy center of the city. Still, it only takes 15–20 minutes to walk to the shops and restaurants in the center. The hotel rates include free parking. The rooms have lovely views to the lake or the University campus area. From the porch of Hotel Alba start 5 km and 10 km routes that circle the lake and provide an ideal opportunity for walks or jogging.
Standard single room 100 €/night
Superior single room 111 € / night
Standard twin room 122 €/night
Jr Suite single room 145 €/night
Jr Suite double room 165 € / night
The conference rate is valid for reservations made by 16 July, 2022 or until the block reservation is full.
Booking through the hotel website www.hotellialba.fi, via email info [a] hotellialba.fi or by phone +35814636311.
Hotelli Milton, Hannikaisenkatu 29 (discount code: 'FINSSE')
Hotel Milton is a cozy and traditional hotel near both the bus and railway station Travel Centre and the city center. Make a reservation with the code FINSSE through the hotel website www.hotellimilton.com, by phone +358 14 3377 900, or via email info@hotellimilton.com. Discount bookings by 18 July latest (or as soon as the quota is used up).
Single room 85 €/night
Double room 120/night
Original Sokos Hotel Alexandra, Hannikaisenkatu 35 (discount code: 'BFINSSE')
Original Sokos Hotel Alexandra is conveniently located near the city, and the bus and railway station.
Standard single room 132 €/night
Standard twin room 142 €/night
Discount bookings by 22 July latest, (or as soon as the quota is used up). Booking either through sokokoshotels.fi , or via e-mail alexandra.jyvaskyla@sokoshotels.fi, or by phone +358 20 1234 640.
Time Hostel (two locations, as below)
Time Hostel, Vaasankatu
Single room (shared bathroom): rates starting from 50 €
Double room (shared bathroom): rates starting from 60 €
Bed in the dormitory: rates starting from 30 €
Time Rooms by the Hospital Nova
Single room (shared bathroom): rates starting from 45 €
Double/twin room (shared bathroom): rates starting from 60 €
Room for with a private bathroom: rates starting from 70 €
Further information and bookings: https://www.timehostel.fi/hostel/?lang=en
Organizers
FINSSE-10 is organized by the English section of the Department of Language and Communication Studies. The organizing committee includes: Leila Kääntä (chair), Joe McVeigh (secretary), Helen Mäntymäki, Dave Sayers, and Terhi Paakkinen (administrative support).