Cover not available
Part of
Language Variation – European Perspectives VIII: Selected papers from the Tenth International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 10), Leeuwarden, June 2019
Edited by Hans Van de Velde, Nanna Haug Hilton and Remco Knooihuizen
[Studies in Language Variation 25] 2021
► pp. 181–208

Chapter 8
Benim

A new pronoun in Swedish

ORCID logo | Centre for Research on Bilingualism at Stockholm University
A new first-person pronoun has emerged in the vernacular of Stockholm Swedish. A loan from Turkish, benim is indexically self-aggrandizing and a feature of the male genderlect of Stockholm’s racialized proletariat. It is also typologically unusual by virtue of being a loanword in an abstract functional role, namely, a pronoun. I detail several factors that, in concert, allowed benim to enter into Swedish first as a naked prototype, then as a reanalysis of dissociative third-person constructions, and finally, as a productive first-person personal pronoun. I conclude further that the actuation of these factors was the unique social ecology of class and racial exclusion, which are generally known to drive symbolic status-moves among the subordinated.
Keywords: contact linguistics, constructionalization, grammaticalization, multiethnolects, pronouns, Rinkeby Swedish, Stockholm Swedish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Stockholm: Europe’s first-documented multiethnolect
    • 1.2Slang and symbolic distinction
  • 2.Research aims
  • 3.Data: A corpus of Stockholmian hip hop
  • 4.Syntactic use of benim
  • 5.Socio-indexical pragmatics of benim
  • 6.Social profile of benim users
    • 6.1Ethnic and national heritage
    • 6.2Social class
    • 6.3Gender
  • 7.The evolution of benim: A hypothesis
    • 7.1The Turkish use of benim and its dominance in the feature pool
    • 7.2Left dislocation in the Nordic languages
    • 7.3Benim as a left-dislocated noun in an illeist construction
    • 7.4Grammatical constructionalization of ‘benim han e’ to ‘benim’
    • 7.5Summarizing the proposed evolutionary trajectory of ‘benim’
  • 8. Benim in historical context
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.25.08you
References (73)
References
Androutsopoulos, Jannis. 2000. Ultra korregd Alder! Zur medialen Stilisierung und Aneignung von “Türkendeutsch”. Deutsche Sprache 29, 321–339.Google Scholar
. 2009. Language and the three spheres of hip hop. In H. Samy Alim, Awad Ibrahim and Alastair Pennycook (eds.) Global linguistic flows: Hip hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language, 43–62. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Auer, Peter. 2003. “Türkenslang”: Ein jugendsprachlicher Ethnolekt des Deutschen und seine Transformationen. In Annelies Häcki-Buhofer (ed.), Spracherwerb und Lebensalter. Kolloquium anlässlich des 60. Geburtstags von Harald Burger, 255–264. Tübingen: Francke.Google Scholar
Behschnitt, Wolfgang. 2013. The rhythm of hip hop: Multi-ethnic slang in Swedish literature after 2000. In Wolfgang Behschnitt, Sarah De Mul & Liesbeth Minnaard (eds.), Literature, Language, and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia and the Low Countries (Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature 71), 175–195. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bergman, Gösta. 1931. Rotvälska: Rommani, månsing, förbrytarspråk och slang. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand.Google Scholar
. 1964. Slang och hemliga språk. Stockholm: Prisma.Google Scholar
Carling, Gerd. 2005. Romani i svenskan: Storstadsslang och standardspråk. Stockholm: Carlssons Bokförlag.Google Scholar
Centre for Business History. 2019. Åren med den omstridda motboken [webpage]. [URL]
Cheshire, Jenny. 2013. Grammaticalisation in social context: The emergence of a new English pronoun. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(5), 608–633. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox & Eivind Torgersen. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: The emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(2), 151–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2000. Lingua franca and ethnolects in Europe and beyond. Sociolinguistica 14. 83–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cornips, Leonie & Vincent de Rooij. 2013. Selfing and othering through categories of race, place, and language among minority youths in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In Ingrid Gogolin, Peter Siemund, Monika Edith Schulz & Julia Davydova (eds.), Multilingualism and language diversity in urban areas (Acquisition, Identities, Space, Education 1), 129–164. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cutler, Cecelia & Unn Røyneland. 2015. Where the fuck am I from? Hip-hop youth and the (re)negotiation of language and identity in Norway and the US. In Jacomine Nortier (ed.), Language, youth and identity in the 21st century: Linguistic practices across urban spaces, 139–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 2000. Language variation as social practice: The linguistic construction of identity in Belten High. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2008. Variation and the indexical field. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(4), 453–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Field, Fredric W. 2002. Linguistic Borrowing in Bilingual Contexts, Vol. 62. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2008. Loanword typology: Steps toward a systematic cross-linguistic study of lexical borrowability. In Thomas Stolz, Dik Bakker & Rosa Salas Palomo (eds.), Aspects of language contact: New theoretical, methodological and empirical findings with special focus on romancisation processes (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT] 35), 43–62. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1950. The analysis of linguistic borrowing. Language 26(2), 210–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hesse, Barnor. 2007. Racialized modernity: An analytics of white mythologies. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(4), 643–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hock, Hans H. 2009. Principles of historical linguistics. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Honeybone, Patrick. 2007. New-dialect formation in nineteenth century Liverpool: A brief history of Scouse. In Anthony Grant & Clive Grey (eds.) The Mersey sound: Liverpool’s language, people and places, 106–140. Liverpool: Open House Press.Google Scholar
Horn, Laurence R. 2008. “I love me some him”: The landscape of non-argument datives. In Olivier Bonami & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (eds.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 7: Papers from CSSP 2007, 169–192. Paris: CSSP.Google Scholar
Hout, Roeland van & Pieter Muysken. 1994. Modeling lexical borrowability. Language Variation and Change 6(1). 39–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hübinette, Tobias, Helena Hörnfeldt, Fataneh Farahani & René L. Rosales. (2012). Om ras och vithet i det samtida Sverige. In Tobias Hübinette, Helena Hörnfeldt, Fataneh Farahani & René L. Rosales (eds.), Om ras och vithet i det samtida Sverige, 11–36. Stockholm: Mångkulturellt Centrum.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–84. Oxford: James Currey Publishers.Google Scholar
Johannessen, Janne B. 2014. Left dislocation in main and subordinate clauses. Nordic Atlas of Language Structures 1(1). 8–15.Google Scholar
Johnston, Paul A. 2015. Vowel system restructuring in the West Midlands of England. In Michael Adams, Laurel J. Brinton & R. D. Fulk (eds.), Evidence and method in histories of English (Studies in the History of the English Language VI), 183–200. Berlin & Munich & Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jonsson, Rickard, Anna G. Franzén & Tommaso M. Milani. 2020. Making the threatening other laughable: Ambiguous performances of urban vernaculars in Swedish media. Language & Communication 71. 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2018. Dialect formation and dialect change in the Industrial Revolution: British vernacular English in the nineteenth century. In Laura Wright (ed.), Southern English Varieties Then and Now (Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] 100), 8–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koch, Martin. 1916. Guds vackra värld: En historia om rätt och orätt. Del 3. Stockholm: Albert Bonnier.Google Scholar
Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt. 1988a. Rinkebysvenska – en dialekt? In Per Linell, Viveka Adelswärd, Torbjörn Nilsson & Per A. Pettersson (eds.), Svenskans beskrivning 16, Vol. 1, 264–278. Linköping: Tema Kommunikation.Google Scholar
. 1988b. Stockholmsspråk i förändring. In Gertrud Pettersson (ed.), Studier i svensk språkhistoria, 133–147. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
. 1994. Ungdomspråk (Ord och stil 25). Stockholm: Hallgren & Fallgren.Google Scholar
. 2001. Lever Ekenssnacket? Om äldre och nyare Stockholmsslang. Uppsala: Kungliga Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur.Google Scholar
Kotsinas, Ulla-Britt, & Dogge Doggelito. 2004. Förortsslang. Stockholm: Norstedts Akademiska Förlag.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
. 1963. The social motivation of a sound change. Word 19(3). 273–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. Principles of linguistic change, Volume 2: Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lagerström, Sven H. G. 2004. Månsing: Knallernas hemliga språk. Borås: Jonito Förlag.Google Scholar
Lee, Raymond L. M. 2010. On the margins of belonging: Confronting cosmopolitanism in the late modern age. Journal of Sociology 46(2). 169–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lentin, Alana. 2008. Europe and the Silence about Race. European Journal of Social Theory 11(4). 487–503. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lentin, Alana & Gavan Titley. 2011. The crises of multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age. London, New York: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Lindell, Lenny, Kenth Thorbjörnsson-Djerf & Gerd Carling. 2008. Ordbok över svensk romani: Resandefolkets språk och sånger. Stockholm: Podium.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2002. Romani: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miyazaki, Ayumi. 2004. Japanese junior high school girls’ and boys’ first-person pronoun use and their social world. In Shigeko Okamoto & Janet S. Shibamoto-Smith (eds.), Japanese language, gender, and ideology: Cultural models and real people, 256–274. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mulinari, Diana & Anders Neergaard. 2004. Den nya svenska arbetarklassen: Facket och de rasifierade arbetarna. Umeå: Borea.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1981. Quechua en Spaans in het Andesgebied. Tijdschrift voor Taal- en Tekstwetenschap 1. 124–138.Google Scholar
Nortier, Jacomine & Margreet Dorleijn. 2008. A Moroccan accent in Dutch: A sociocultural style restricted to the Moroccan community? International Journal of Bilingualism 12(1–2). 125–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Opsahl, Toril & Unn Røyneland. 2016. Reality rhymes: Recognition of rap in multicultural Norway. Linguistics and Education 36. 45–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 1995. Language crossing and the problematisation of ethnicity and socialisation. Pragmatics 5(4). 485–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. From ‘multi-ethnic adolescent heteroglossia’ to ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’. Language & Communication 31(4). 276–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandin, Bengt. 2003. Skolan, barnen och samhället i ett historiskt perspektiv. In Staffan Selander (ed.), Kobran, nallen och majjen: Tradition och förnyelse i svensk skola och skolforskning, 55–69. Stockholm: Liber.Google Scholar
Smalley, Nichola. 2015. Contemporary urban vernaculars in rap, literature and in translation in Sweden and the UK. London, UK: University College London: Ph.D. thesis.Google Scholar
Stæhr, Andreas & Lian M. Madsen. 2017. ‘Ghetto language’ in Danish mainstream rap. Language & Communication 52. 60–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Therborn, Göran. 1998. A unique chapter in the history of democracy: The Swedish social democrats. In Klaus Misgeld, Karl Molin & Klas Åmark (eds.), Creating Social Democracy, 1–34. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.Google Scholar
Thesleff, Arthur. 1912. Stockholms forbrytarspråk och lägre slang, 1910–1912. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag.Google Scholar
Topografiska Corpsen. 1861. Trakten omkring Stockholm i IX blad. Stockholm: Stockholms Stadsarkiv.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 2015. Toward a coherent account of grammatical constructionalization. In Lotte Sommerer, Spike Gildea, Jóhanna Barðdal & Elena Smirnova (eds.), Diachronic construction grammar, 51–80. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. What is a ghetto? Constructing a sociological concept [pre-published proof]. In Niel J. Smelser & Paul B. Baltes (eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences. London: Pergamon Press. [URL]
Whitney, William D. 1881. On mixture in language. Transactions of the American Philological Association 12. 5–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Young, Nathan. 2018. ‘Copycats, ja dom shouf’: Using hip hop to compare lexical replications in Danish and Swedish multiethnolects. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 24(2). 174–184.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold. 2007. Illeism and its Relatives. Unpublished paper retrieved from [URL]
Discography
Adel. 2018, January. Choklad [Chocolate] [music video]. Fivestar Records and Virgin Miri. Retrieved from [URL]
Jireel. 2016, September. Cataleya [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Joel Fungz, Ibbe, Chris o Fada, Michel Dida & Ille FreeWay. 2018, March. Nia Remix [Niner Remix] [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Macky & Thrife. 2017, August. Foten pågasen [Foot on the gas] [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Pyramids, Jireel, Pato Pooh & Lamix. 2017], June. Jet Jet [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Showit. 2018, July. Main Chick [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Yasin Byn. 2015, June. Vart än jag går [Wherever I go] [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Z.e. 2016, May. Trampar nu på deras tår [Stepping now on their toes] [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Z.e, & Jiggz. 2018, November. Sverige vet [Sweden knows] [music video]. Retrieved from [URL]
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Young, Nathan J.
2022. The Sociolectal and Stylistic Variability of Rhythm in Stockholm. Language and Speech 65:4 ► pp. 1034 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.