The paper focuses on concepts and attitudes towards address practices in Finland. The data comes from the research project in which over hundred linguistic life stories have been collected by interviews (https://blogs.helsinki.fi/100finnish). The interviewees represent different social and age groups from different parts of Finland. In addition to native Finnish-speaking informants, linguistic and ethnic minorities are represented in the corpus.

My aim is to show what the attitudes towards the use of T and V forms look like in the light of this data. The focus is on observations and opinions related to the address practices in service encounters and in the media. When analysing the data I will pay attention to such variables as age and gender as well as an informant’s social, regional and linguistic background.

Previous studies have revealed that the use of T and V forms in Finnish service encounters is related to the age of the addressee or the age difference between the interlocutors. Age is also a significant variable when discussing the choice between T and V forms. On the basis of my preliminary results, the relevance of age and other social variables is not trivial for attitudes in present-day Finland, but the division of views is too complicated for making generalisations. However, the disappearance of the V forms is not topical in the near future, although there have been strong opinions against them since the 1970’s.

When reporting tendencies found in the data, I will also consider the role of the interviewer. It is especially interesting in this case, because the majority of the data have been collected by crowdsourcing. i.e. by over 60 students. In spite of a common questionnaire, there is variation how the questionnaire has been applied in practice.

References

• Havu, Eva, Johanna Isosävi & Hanna Lappalainen. 2014. Les stratégies d’adresse en finnois: Comparaison entre deux types de corpus oraux institutionnels. In Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (ed.), S’adresser à autrui: les formes nominales d’adresse dans une perspective comparative interculturelle, 303–336. Chambéry: Publication Chambéry.
• Lappalainen, Hanna. 2015. Sinä vai te vai sekä että? Puhuttelukäytännöt suomen kielessä [T or V or both? Addressing practices in Finland]. In Johanna Isosävi & Hanna Lappalainen (eds.), Saako sinutella vai täytyykö teititellä? Tutkimuksia eurooppalaisten kielten puhuttelukäytännöistä, 72–104. Helsinki: Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society.
• Yli-Vakkuri, Valma. 2005. Politeness in Finland: Evasion at all cost. In Leo Hickey & Miranda Stewart (eds.), Politeness in Europe, 189–202. (Multilingual Matters 127.) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.