From countryside dialects to Vaasa Swedish. Indications of dialect levelling and enregisterment of a town variety in four steps

Abstract

The aim of the study is to discuss changing indexicality and enregisterment of a Swedish dialect in western Finland. Indexicality is studied for the variety as a whole, rather than for individual dialectal traits. Fifteen women and 15 men born 1936-1997 from the town Vaasa and the neighboring municipality Korsholm were interviewed. The theoretical and methodological framework for the study was taken from sociolinguistics and perceptual dialectology. The informants show a collision of different indexical orders: while older informants tend to link Vaasa Swedish (VS) to the working class, younger ones tend to associate the variety with the whole town. In the first case, VS seems to index modesty and certain poverty, while in the second case, it indexes toughness, courage, aggression and self-confidence. The question of whether a moderate use of VS simply may index authentic Vaasa Swede is discussed. This would explain why women and younger people use the dialect less, perhaps being unwilling to be associated with toughness and aggression, while still wanting to be associated with the town and to call their own variety VS. The variety seems to be enregistered for younger informants, whereas older informants pick out certain working-class neighborhoods as bearers of a distinct dialect. The enregisterment of VS can be described as a four-step gradual movement from countryside dialects to working-class speech, and then from working-class speech in a certain neighborhood to a town dialect.