Publications

Publication details [#60541]

Saarinen, Taina and Sari Pöyhönen. 2015. Constructions of bilingualism in Finnish Government programmes and a newspaper discussion site debate. Current Issues in Language Planning 16 (4) : 392–408.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Routledge

Annotation

The bilingualism notion in Finnish political discourse is chiefly employed in the meaning of official Finnish-Swedish bilingualism, assuring both Finnish and Swedish-speakers the delivery of public services, like schooling and health care, in their first language. Various recent language ideological discussions (on a Finnish newspaper site) contest particularly the position of Swedish in education and administration, thus altering debate on what can be considered as bilingualism. It is shown that language policy discourses are of a multi-sited nature: they validate and dispute views generated by several stakeholders over time.