Kuuntelija radion kielen normittajana

• Ritva Paananen

Avainsanat: normit, radiokieli

Abstrakti

The listener as a norm-setter of radio language (englanti)

4/1996 (100)

Ritva Paananen (Research Centre for the Languages of Finland; [e-mail]):

THE LISTENER AS A NORM-SETTER OF RADIO LANGUAGE

Commercial local radio stations emerged in the 1980s as competitors to the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). After losing the monopoly, YLE has been forced to pay more attention to market demands in its programmes policy. Listener preferences must be heeded more than before when making programming plans, and this has led to a shift from peoples enlightenment towards more entertaining programmes.

Radio has become more mundane, and this has also affected the language used in broadcasting. Alongside the traditional standard language, radio language now also accepts spoken language varieties. The article examines the attitudes of radio listeners towards different language forms on the radio based on the results of a survey. Approximately 400 people living in Helsinki and elsewhere in Finland replied to the survey.

The result was that the repliers distinguished quite clearly between the different speech situations and programme types on the radio. The majority of listeners preferred to hear standard language from journalists in news and current affairs programmes. As to other programmes, such as debates, sports broadcasts, light music programmes and phone-ins, most repliers approved of informal spoken language. Approximately one fifth of all repliers were, however, ready to accept the use of informal spoken language in all programme types, with the possible exception of news broadcasts. These repliers were all under 30. A few percent of the repliers, all of them over 50, were of the opinion that journalists should use standard language in all programme types.

Thus, the attitudes towards the use of standard language and spoken language on the radio vary depending on both the type of radio speech and the age of the listener. The older listeners prefer standard language more often than the younger ones, who favour informal spoken language in more programme types. Whether the listeners live in Helsinki or elsewhere in Finland seems to have no influence on the attitudes.