GET TO THE POINT: LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE IN THE FINNISH ZONE Elizabeth Peterson University of Helsinki

GET TO THE POINT: LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE IN THE FINNISH ZONE

Elizabeth Peterson

University of Helsinki

• my very own Fulbright project, 2000-2001 (Peterson 2004, my PhD)

• a few key findings about linguistic politeness in Finnish

• metalinguistic data from Finnish speakers

• current research on anglicisms in Finnish discourse

2Communication in Finnish -- Peterson

OVERVIEW

≠ ettiquette≠ manners≠ ‘please’ and ‘thank you’

not entirely, anywayfor a linguist, politeness = a specific culture’s behavioral norms (House 2005)there is no such thing as an

“impolite” culturewe do not say that one culture is

“more polite” than anothereach culture has its own

culturally specific ways of encoding politeness


LINGUISTIC POLITENESS

• What kind of factors are Finnish people sensitive to in a communicative event?

traditional values of power, distance, and rate of imposition (of requests) (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987)

• Are there signs of variation?if yes, then we know that there

are specific rules of politeness in Finnish


QUESTIONS IN MY RESEARCH

WHAT LINGUISTIC TOOLS HELP SHOW POLITENESS?(OR MITIGATION?)

English

request type • interrogative: Can I?

• command: Give me

• hint: That smells good.

modal verbs • Can I?• May I? • Can you?

verb tense/mood • Can you give me?

• Could you give me?

politeness markers

please, thank you

2nd person address

thou, you, ya’ll, youse, etc.

Finnish

request type • interrogative: Annatko?

• command: Anna.• hint: Tuoksuu

hyvältä.

modal verbs • Voinko?• Saanko?• Voitko?

verb tense/mood • Voitko antaa?• Voisitko antaa?

politeness markers

kiitos, -han/hän

2nd person address

sinä, te


• sociolinguistic interviews and discourse completion tasks with 68 native speakers of Finnish

• results analyzed both quantitatively (multivariate analyses) and qualitatively (through broad transcription)


METHOD

Communication in Finnish -- Peterson 7

=P +P0

20

40

60

80

Social power and semantic formula

voida "can you"--most "polite"

interrogative "Annatko?"--least "polite"

saanko "May I?"


-D +D0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80Social distance and request

type

Voida "Can you?" -- most "polite"Interrogative, "Annatko?" Least "polite"saanko 'may I?'


-R +R0

20

40

60

80

100

Rate of imposition and request type

Voida "Can you" --most "polite"Interrogative "annatko?" -- least "polite"Saanko 'may I?'


Less {P, D, R} More {P, D, R}0

102030405060708090P, D, R values and conditional

verbs

Power Distance Rate of imposition

Use o

f con

dit

ion

al


-D D +D0

20

40

60

80

100

Social distance and ”you”

formal te informal sinä

• What kind of factors are Finnish people sensitive to in a communicative event?

distance is important, power seems to throw them off, and rate of imposition (of requests) leads them to all sorts of extra verbiage they would be quick to deny…

• Are there signs of variation?oh yes• What do we know then? that Finnish has culturally-

specific rules of politeness


ROUND UP

• Finnish politeness is withdrawing and evasive

• modesty, a wish to remain inconspicuous

• may even mistrust or be embarrassed by overt politeness or flattery

• conversation begins only after formal introductions

• politeness forms are based mostly on loans from other languages; therefore ”common” people may consider them artificial or humiliating (hegemenous)


POLITENESS IN FINLAND(YLI-VAKKURI, 2006)

”EVASION AT ALL COSTS”

• What do Finnish people say about themselves and their language and customs?

Four major themes...


PART 2 OF MY DISSERTATION RESEARCH

• “I think that in Finnish we go straight to the point. In English you have all these words that might make it softer, but they don’t mean anything. But our culture is maybe such that we don’t have such little chat … but it depends on the way you were raised, what sort of family you come from, what sort of manners you have.” (51-year-old female)


1. FINNISH HONESTLY PRECLUDES SMALL-TALK AND OTHER SUCH FRIVOLITIES

“We are used to obeying all sorts of rules. All sorts of these regulations and directives that the EU makes, Finland is always the first to do them, and on time! In all the media, it is reported how Finns did this without any criticism at all! Sometimes I feel like the whole EU is just laughing at Finns and how they go and do all the things without even questioning.” (29-year-old female)


2. FINNS ARE LAW-ABIDING

“I would say that we in Helsinki are less cordial than most people in Europe … Politeness has grown in the last 10 to 25 years, maybe because we want to be more European. More … sivistynyt (‘civilized’). I think Finnish people try to treat strangers better than they treat other Finns. They try to be more polite.” (27-year-old male)


3. THE TIMES THEY ARE A –CHANGING ... AND SO IS OUR LANGUAGE

“[In Finland], when you bump into somebody, you don’t say ‘excuse me.’ You say, ‘oh-ho!’ – and that’s already a lot! It doesn’t matter.” (38-year-old female)


4. THE (LACK OF) IMPORTANCE OF LINGUISTIC POLITENESS

• “In Finnish, if you say kiitos, it really means ‘please.’ You can’t use it all the time like you do in English. Or maybe I could say ‘Voisitko olla hiljaa?’ [‘Could you be quiet?’], and the please is in the conditional verb.” (31-year-old female)– backs up quantitative

results• criticism of the use of please in

English: “you use it all the time.”


LANGUAGE VS. LANGUAGE USE: POLITENESS

• my obsession with ”the magic word”

• anglicisms in Finnish


MY MOST CURRENT RESEARCH

21

Paunonen & Paunonen (2000): • pliis first used in 1944• Suomisen Olli rakastuu (‘Olli

Suominen falls in love’), by Orvo Saarikivi

Communication in Finnish -- Peterson

pliis ‘please’


an index of popular~youth

culture engagement

Yeah, put on some hot music, please!

23

SOME RECENT OBSERVATIONS

2014: MORE THAN A MILLION GOOGLE HITS ON ’PLIIS’

“Keep minimum wage, pliiiiiis”University student demonstration in downtown Helsinki, March 18, 2010

ad campaign for Helsinki Transit 2012

unlike jees ’yes,’not yet in official Finnish dictionaries

Communication in Finnish -- Peterson

kiitos and pliis: (Peterson & Vaattovaara 2014)

• syntactically: pliis preferred clause medially; kiitos clause finally

• semantically/pragmatically: different types of utterances/intention

• regionally and socially: pliis is associated with young, urban women– but is used to a significant extent

by men, as well• kiitos serves as a marker of negative

politeness, whereas pliis serves as a marker of positive politeness – a gap in the pragmatic system of

Finnish?24Communication in Finnish -- Peterson

“NEW” VS “OLD” POLITENESS MARKERS IN FINNISH

• preposition, adverb• semantic overlap in Finnish

with standard form noin• about also behaves in ways

that do not overlap with English ’about’ or Finnish noin

(Nykopp 2013)


ABOUT‘about’

• standard Finnish form herranjumala, minun luojani– BUT, the forms are

pragmatically and semantically distinct from each other; NOT variants

• like in English, semantically bleached

• less integrated than pliis and about?– but, note [omg]

(Antturi 2104) 26Communication in Finnish -- Peterson

OH MY GOD!

Oh my god, must tuntuu et joku tulee tonne huoneeseen jat sit se on silleen omg te tapoitte hänet.

’oh my god, I feel like someone is going to walk into that room and he’ll be like, ’omg, you killed her.’

(Antturi 2014)


Janice, a character from the American TV series Friends

social: young, global, urban

pragmatic: low social distance, solidarity, informality


WHAT WORKLOAD DO THESE FORMS SHARE IN FINNISH?

A wrongly parked car caused a tram traffic jam

in Helsinki six times yesterday. Pliis, remember

to leave 80 cm between the side mirror and

the rails!

example 1: Deputy Mayor of Helsinki (December 2012)

29Anglicisms in Finnish -- Peterson

“The burgers were quite all right, but who ever heard of being charged 1.50 euros for water in Finland without even being told in advance?”

example 2: Finnish celebrity chef, June 2013: ”Watergate”

“Yeah, and the staff that brings you the glass costs nothing? You can and may complain, but you have to have a reason. At home it’s free. Not in a restaurant.”

30Anglicisms in Finnish -- Peterson

WHAT IS THE TRAJECTORY?

codeswitch?

borrowing

urbanness, globalism,

youth

further adaptation

urbanness, globalism,

youth

grammatically Finnish;

pragmatically Finnish

• it’s a different country, with different cultural norms. Their aptitude in English might throw you off, but for many people, knowledge of English does not equal knowledge of American or English cultural norms.

• for many Finns, even their English can be used in a ”Finnish” way when it comes to conversational norms, pragmatics and politeness


TAKE-HOME MESSAGE

Thank you! my contact information:

[email protected]

Downtown campus, Metsätalo, 6th floor, B wing,

room 626



Antturi, S. (2014). "Oh my god oh my god oh my god! mä en saa henkee!" English interjection in Finnish discourse. University of Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages.

Brown, P. and S. Levinson. (1987) Politeness: Some universals. Cambridge.

Nykopp, L. (2013). "Sanamuoto about näin": the use of about in Finnish discourse. University of Helsinki: Department of Modern Languages.

Paunonen, H.;& Paunonen , M. (2000). Tsennaaks Stadii, bonjaaks slangii. Stadin slangin suursanakirja. [The dictionary of Helsinki slang]. Helsinki: WSOY.

Peterson, Elizabeth. 2010. Perspective and politeness in Finnish requests. Pragmatics 20 (3). 401–423.

Peterson, E. (2009). “It’s Just Different”: Emotions and Observations about Finnish and English. Helsinki English studies : electronic journal of the Department of English at the University of Helsinki. 5

Peterson, E.;& Vaattovaara, J. (2014). Kiitos and pliis: the relationship of native and borrowed politeness markers in Finnish. Journal of Politeness Research

Yli-Vakkuri, Valma. 2005. Politeness in Finland: Evasion at all costs. In Leo Hickey and Miranda Stewart (eds.), Politeness in Europe. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Documents

GET TO THE POINT: LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE IN THE FINNISH ZONE Elizabeth Peterson University of Helsinki