Representations of Finland in contemporary Finnish popular music

The purpose of this paper is to study representations of Finland in contemporary Finnish popular music. Finland’s self-image and concerns are reflected in the popular music of the time and it is important to take stock and self-evaluate as Finland turns 100. Theoretically, this study relies on Cultural Studies in the sense that it views nations as being continuously reproduced through texts and other discursive actions. The data consists of 21 songs of different genres of popular music and released between 1999 and 2016. The method combines qualitative Relational Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. I identify and exemplify commonly occurring themes with extracts from the songs. The themes are then analysed with regard to their cultural, historical and economic context. I relate the recurring representations to the themes identified by Malmberg’s (1999) journalistic analysis of the content of pop song lyrics. I also comment on the intertextual connections between the Finland and Finnishness presented in the songs. My study shows that Finland is represented in Finnish popular music through the following themes: an ironic take on depression and alcohol, marginalisation, patriotic landscapes, glorified countryside, materialistic and meaningless lives of millennials, Finns and the world, gothic dystopia, political protest, and everything is okay

The Semiotic Landscape in Nuuk, Greenland

This paper explores the semiotic landscape in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. The connection between images and choice of language in both public and private signs is analysed in relation to the function of the signs, Greenlandic culture, history and politics, and the space where the signs, notices, and advertisements are displayed. The data was collected in May 2017. The focus is on signs depicting the sun, polar bears, and people. The use of the images and the choice of languages reveals centralising, reclaiming, localising or even transgressive tendencies in the civic frame, the school system, the community, the marketplace, and on the walls of social housing. The data also shows the importance of English in the global marketplace (tourism and shipping), the tertiary education system, and graffiti. The Greenlandic language is firmly in the centre in almost all contexts, but Danish appears in the civic and community frames and in the marketplace for practical reasons

Learning language, learning culture: Constructing Finnishness in adult learner textbooks

Learning a second language can be considered a primary example of what Berger and Luckmann call ‘secondary socialisation’. Through careful decisions concerning what to include and what to omit, textbooks have the power to direct what a beginner can and should say in their target language. Additionally, textbooks have the responsibility of representing the cultures that speak the language. Much of a language learner’s initial understanding of a national culture in its own language is dependent on the constructions of that culture in their learning resources. This article examines how two widely used series of Finnish language textbooks for adult learners construct ‘typical’ Finnishness and the implications of these constructions for contemporary debates about national identity. Through an application of a version of critical discourse analysis, we show that the hegemonic image of Finnishness conforms to the stereotype of a modern, advanced and nature-loving people. But the image is also middle-class, White and conventional (even conservative) in terms of gender equality and sexuality. We argue that the textbooks have a key role in creating an inclusive sense of the host culture and that this inclusiveness is an asset for language acquisition, although at the moment they fall short of this aim

The Translation of Hebrew Flora and Fauna Terminology in North Sámi and West Greenlandic Fin-de-Siècle Bibles

This study is a comparative analysis of the strategies employed in the translation of geographically specific flora and fauna terminology in the first complete Hebrew Bible translations into North Sámi (1895) and West Greenlandic (1900). These two contemporaneous translations lend themselves to fruitful comparison because both North Sámi and Greenlandic are spoken in the Arctic by the indigenous communities which share a similar history of colonisation by Lutheran Scandinavians. Despite this common background, our study reveals a striking difference in translation methods: the North Sámi translation exhibits a systematic foreignising, formally equivalent approach using loan words from Scandinavian languages (e.g. šakkalak ‘jackals’ from Norwegian sjakaler, granatæbel ‘pomegranate’ from Norwegian granateple), whereas the Greenlandic translation typically creates descriptive neologisms (e.g. milakulâĸ ‘the spotted one’ for ‘leopard’) or utilises culturally specific domesticating, dynamically equivalent Arctic terms (e.g. kingmernarssuaK ‘big lingonberry’ for ‘pomegranate’). The paper assesses the reasons behind these different translatorial approaches