AFinLAn vuosikirja

Luokanopettajaopiskelijat kielellisiä havaintojaan selittämässä

Mari Hankala — 2024-11-06

In light of previous research, it is important to examine class teachers’ perceptions of language so that we can develop pedagogical practices to evoke pupils’ interest and enthusiasm towards the language. In this article, we study what student teachers perceive about language and how they conceptualise their perceptions. We examined 264 student teachers’ interpretations of two sentences with different ambiguities and a nonsense sentence. The data were analysed using both theory- and data-driven qualitative content analysis. The results showed that many students already had a high level of metalinguistic competence: they perceived the ambiguity of the sentences, approached the nonsense sentence with relevant concepts and were able to explicate their linguistic deduction. However, some of the students had challenges, for example in using metalanguage, or they perceived the sentences mainly from a normative perspective. The results can be utilized in developing teaching practices in teacher education and in enhancing the language awareness of student teachers.

Tietoturvan ja sisällöllisen saavutettavuuden diskurssit pankkialalla

Annikki Hyppönen — 2024-11-06

The aim of the study is to find out how banks’ accessibility experts and customer service staff talk about the accessibility and information security of online banking services. The focus is on content accessibility, in which the content of the communication is understandable and easy to adopt. Research material was collected from accessibility experts and customer service representatives through interviews and a survey. Discourse analysis is used as a method of analysis. The results of the study show that content accessibility and information security are approached through equality, the bank’s reputation, and the security of services. As a conclusion of the study, it can be stated that information security offers a concrete perspective on content accessibility and emphasizes that it is an advantage for the bank to meet more than the minimum accessibility requirements in its online banking services, whereby the meaning of the language used in the content of the services is emphasized.

Language and spatiality in the study of migrants’ integration into Finnish working life: Building bridges between applied linguistics and geography

Henna Jousmäki — 2024-11-06

While several studies have addressed migrants’ status at the Finnish job market as well as multicultural and multilingual workplace interaction, there is a lack of research that ties these more closely with questions of spatiality. Through discourse analysis, this article examines the interrelationships of language, work, and place in three data sets collected around Finland. The purpose is to better understand how experiential place and geographical space matter in the discourses construed of and by migrants working or seeking employment in Finland. The findings show that different understandings of spatiality feed into one another and affect employment opportunities, requirements for language skills in the workplace and how the relationship between language competence and professional skills is challenged and negotiated.

Käyttäjäkeskeisyys osallisuuden mahdollistajana Valvotun tapaamisen säännöt -sarjakuva-asiakirjassa

Mira Kainulainen — 2024-11-06

In this study, I conducted a functional text analysis on the Valvotun tapaamisen säännöt comic document which presents the rules of supervised visitation. After exploring theory of comic documents, user-centred communication and social inclusion, I analyse the user’s role extratextually and as a character in the text. I examine the user-centredness of the document and how it can enable social inclusion. The results indicate that both the comic document and its communicative context are in many ways user-centred. User-centredness is constructed through multimodal, cognitively accessible communication and intratextual representation of the user as an active participant in the visitation process. The comic format supports social inclusion through cognitive accessibility and by making the user an active participant in the communicative situation. The visual language of comics can motivate closer reading of the document, enabling the user to better understand the rules and follow them, if they so choose.

Vaativaa vai vahingollista valmentamista – missä menee raja? Suomalaisten päivälehtien uutisointi valmentajien epäasiallisesta käytöksestä ja negatiivisesta palautediskurssista urheiluvalmennuksessa

Johanna Koivisto — 2024-11-06

In this article, we focus on Finnish daily newspapers’ coverage of inappropriate behaviour and negative feedback from sports coaches towards their trainees. The aim of the study is to explore the reported content and meanings of the feedback given by coaches and highlight the negative feedback discourses produced by the news in which the coach’s biopower is directed at the athlete. The research data consists of 23 sports news articles published in 16 different daily newspapers. The data was collected from the digital newspaper service epress.fi, using the search command “valmentajan epäasiallinen*” (eng. “coach’s inappropriate*”). Our research method is based on critical discourse analysis and its key concepts such as biopower, discourse practice, sociocultural practice, ideology, hegemony and discursive field, but otherwise, we combine different discourse theories relatively freely in our analysis.

Näkymättömyysviitta ja tuntoisuuskysymys – kielenomistajuus, kehollisuus ja tila kielikeskusopiskelijoiden kertomina

Hanna Kosonen — 2024-11-06

This article examines university students’ experiences with the embodied and spatial aspects of language learning and use, along with the concept of language ownership. Bridging sociolinguistics, cognitive science, and the phenomenology of embodiment, the study is based on 11 thematic interviews with students who have taken at least one language course at a Finnish university language center. Our data illustrates how language users describe their bodily and spatial language experiences. We also demonstrate that language ownership, akin to grounded cognition, exists at the intersection of sensory perception, the external body as the object of perception, and the material and social environment. This research enriches the discussion on language learning environments and practices in higher education, while providing an interdisciplinary perspective on sociolinguistic concepts.

“I could learn more words”: Involving stakeholders in defining L2 English reading constructs in diagnostic and dynamic assessment

Dmitri Leontjev — 2024-11-06

There has been a growing effort to combine two L2 (second/foreign language) assessment frameworks that aim to promote student learning but have different theoretical roots – diagnostic and dynamic assessment. This paper focuses on identifying and operationalising L2 English reading constructs in such a novel assessment framework. We will argue that constructs in this assessment framework should include a view of how they develop and, ultimately, actions that should be taken to guide this development. Focusing on the data from teachers (n=43) and learners (n=725) but also Matriculation Examination item writers and raters (censors; n=22), we propose a procedure for defining and operationalising assessed constructs that combines their theoretical understanding and conceptions, understandings, and actions by these stakeholders. We discuss these data with reference to how constructs and their development are understood in the two assessment frameworks.

Contrasting discourses: Digital precariat or flexible entrepreneurship? A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of platform work in German and Finnish business newspapers

Marja Rautajoki — 2024-11-06

Platform work as a new form of work is a globally discussed research topic in various research fields, such as social sciences, economics and labour law. Previous research identifies the significant impact platforms have on work, labour market and society. This article brings a linguistic approach to the topic, analyzing and comparing the discussion on platform work in German and Finnish business newspapers in 2017–2021. The corpus-assisted discourse analysis shows that platform work is discussed in both media partly in same contexts, such as in platform work’s effect on labour market and society, the unclear employment status and the need for stronger regulation. However, the analysis is able to tease out aspects and distinctions of platform work in the media not shown previously. Findings show that the German Handelsblatt represents platform work as a challenge to society with strong regulation requests, whereas the Finnish Kauppalehti highlights the possibilities platform work provides to entrepreneurship and labour market.

Scaffolding learning through reflection: Finnish language students recycling, negotiating, and reinterpreting instructions in a portfolio assignment

Elisa Räsänen — 2024-11-06

Students’ everyday life interactions in the wild are an important resource for their language learning, and reflection helps in utilizing the learning potential of these experiences. Students need scaffolding to benefit from reflection, and task design must support learners’ agency. These requirements suggest a need to examine and develop such reflection tasks. This paper examines a portfolio task developed by the teacher-researcher to enhance students’ learning in the wild as part of an U.S. university-level Finnish Studies program. Drawing on nexus analysis and using discourse analysis, the paper maps and analyzes how phrases from the instructions circulate to the subsequent reflections, and what the implications of this circulation are for the discourses created as well as for learning. The analysis reveals how the students recycle, negotiate, and reinterpret phrases from the original task, and how the task scaffolds the reflections. Pedagogical implications focus on how the task can be developed. The author advocates for the use of nexus analysis in teacher research to bridge research practice with task development and instructional change. As part of their training, pre-service teachers are recommended to collect and analyze student data to study the implications of the learning tasks they develop and use.

Luonteenvahvuuksien hyödyntäminen aikuisten suomen kielen oppimisessa

Mia Scotson — 2024-11-06

In this article, I will explore how to utilize character strengths in Finnish language learning. This study relies on VIA strengths inventory (Peterson & Seligman 2004). I will examine which character strengths adult Finnish learners utilize and how character strengths are related to learning Finnish, as well as participants’ beliefs regarding character strength intervention. The data of this qualitative study consist of an online questionnaire (n=32), individual and group info meetings online (n=21), character strengths intervention (n=8) and final interviews (n=4). The data were analyzed using content analysis. The results indicate that while some strengths are easily applicable to learning Finnish, others prove challenging to employ in language learning. Furthermore, the findings suggest that while participants found the character strength exercise interesting and enlightening, they expressed a desire for examples demonstrating the application of strengths, along with guidance on identifying and utilizing them.

Laki niin kuin se luetaan – säädöskielen käytettävyyttä tutkimassa

Riitta Suominen — 2024-11-06

The article looks at how readers understand legal text, which characteristics cause difficulties, and which facilitate understanding. The method used is protocol analysis. It examines a subject’s reading process, highlighting the features that affect reading and understanding. Subjects read test texts while verbalizing their reading experience, and their thinking aloud is recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Subjects include lawyers, officials, and laypeople, and test materials contain extracts from the Finnish Inheritance Code, the Income Tax Act, and the Working Time Act. The results show the impact of different textual elements on comprehension and usability.

”Kieli oli tässä kohtaa vain väline” – kulttuuritulkkien, opettajien ja kuraattoreiden näkemyksiä kielestä ja kulttuuritulkkien roolista

Mari Vainikka — 2024-11-06

Alongside public service interpreting consisting of language interpretation, many institutions, including institutions of learning, increasingly use intercultural mediators to communicate with migrants. Drawing on the research tradition of sociology of translation, we analyze our data from two perspectives, mobilizing the sociological concepts of role, agency, and (affective) facework, as well as the linguistic anthropological concept of language ideology. The data consist of semi-structured thematic interviews with intercultural mediators and teachers and school social workers who work with them. The analysis shows that intercultural mediators’ affective labor, based on their broad agency, is fundamental in building trust between migrant families and the school. Intercultural mediation is different from public service interpreting, where monolithic, referential language ideologies are often felt to prevent the achievement of mutual understanding between the participants.

Vastasaapuneiden oppilaiden tiedonalakohtaisten lukutaitojen arviointi: Kielididaktinen näkökulma oppimisen tukeen

Ella Väätäinen — 2024-11-06

The purpose of preparatory education is to familiarise newly arrived pupils with the language of instruction and the school system so that they achieve the skills needed in attending basic education. In this paper, we introduce and examine an assessment tool, “Valu”, designed to assess newly arrived pupils’ disciplinary literacy skills in Finnish in this critical phase. We analyse assessment data and our observations from the first piloting round of the tool, to gain understanding about how primary school pupils’ literacy can be assessed in Finnish language and literature, and mathematics, and about the support the pupils need in completing the tasks. Our findings highlight the importance of teachers’ interactionist support, even though the pupils show signs of learning how to utilise the interventionist support within the Valu tool. Newly arrived pupils studying Finnish language and literature, and mathematics can be supported by recognising what kind of support they need and where.

Esipuhe

Marja Kivilehto — 2024-11-06

Soveltava kielitiede tutkimuksellisia siltoja rakentamassa

Maija Tervola — 2024-11-06

Aika ajoin herää keskustelu soveltavan kielentutkimuksen luonteesta. Yksimielisyyttä asiasta ei luonnollisesti ole, mutta tutkimusalan ytimessä on asemoituminen kielentutkimuksen ja eri toimintaympäristöjen väliin, mikä mahdollistaa monenlaisia tutkimuskohteita ja -asetelmia sekä yhteistyötä eri toimijoiden välillä. Vuoden 2023 AFinLAn syyssymposiumin ja 2024 vuosikirjan teemaksi valittiin Tutkimuksellisia siltoja rakentamassa. Tutkimuksellisilla silloilla tarkoitamme erilaisia yhteyksiä kaikilla tutkimuksen tasoilla, olipa kyse tutkimusmenetelmistä, aineistotyypeistä, teoriasuuntauksista, paradigmoista, kielikäsityksistä tai tieteenaloista. Tässä johdantoartikkelissa perustelemme teeman valintaa ja esittelemme julkaisuun valittuja artikkeleita, jotka tuovat esiin erilaisia tutkimuksellisia siltoja. Artikkeleissa käsitellään niin soveltavan kielentutkimuksen vankkaa ydinaluetta, kielikasvatusta, kuin kurotetaan muihinkin toimintaympäristöihin, joissa kieli ja kielenkäyttö ovat merkityksellinen osa ammatillista toimintaa. Tämä julkaisu osallistuu keskusteluun soveltavan kielentutkimuksen tutkimuskohteesta ja merkityksestä kielentutkimukselle. Julkaisun tavoitteena on laajentaa ja monipuolistaa soveltavan kielentutkimuksen piirissä tehtävää tutkimusta ja kannustaa pohtimaan uusia ja luovia ratkaisuja kielen ja sosiaalisen kontekstin vuorovaikutuksen tarkasteluun.