A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities

English in Spoken Swedish Discourse: A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities Master’s Thesis / Language and Society / Universiteit van Amsterdam Author: Benjamin C. Bomer / Supervisor: dhr. prof. dr. A.P.Versloot 1 English in Spoken Swedish Discourse: A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities 2 Contents 1 Abstract 3 2 Introduction 3 3 Research Questions and Hypothesis 6 4 Background 7 4.1 Overview of the Language Scenario in Sweden ............. 7 4.2 The Historical Influence of Other Languages on Swedish . 9 4.3 Attitudes toward English in Contemporary Sweden .......... 10 4.4 What are loanwords? ........................... 12 5 Theoretical Framework 13 5.1 Assumption 1: Language is a skill ..................... 13 5.1.1 Nativism .............................. 13 5.1.2 Non-nativism ........................... 15 5.2 Assumption 2: Languages are not tightly bound structures . 17 5.3 Assumption 3: Linguistic forms point to social meanings . 20 5.4 ESSD as Code-switching ......................... 21 5.5 On a Definition of Discourse ....................... 23 6 Method 25 6.1 Introduction ................................ 25 6.2 Data Collection .............................. 26 6.3 Notes on Mode, Register, and Stylization ................ 28 7 Findings 29 7.1 Explanation of Types ........................... 30 7.1.1 Type 1 ............................... 30 7.1.2 Type 2 ............................... 30 7.1.3 Type 3 ............................... 30 7.1.4 Type 4 ............................... 31 7.1.5 Types 5 & 6 ............................. 31 7.2 Distribution of ESSD Types ....................... 32 2 English in Spoken Swedish Discourse: A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities 3 8 DiscussionofFindings 33 8.1 ESSD in Context .............................. 33 8.2 Implications of ESSD ........................... 35 8.3 Shortcomings and Future Research .................... 36 9 Conclusion 37 10 References 38 10.1 Literature .................................. 38 10.2 Dictionaries, Encyclopedia, and Institutional Research ......... 40 10.3 Youtube Videos .............................. 40 1 Abstract In this study, we take a look at how English structures emerge in spoken Swedish by examining the discourse used by a selection of Swedish Youtube celebrities in their video content. Four hours of video material revealed a robust general distribution of five types of multilingual structures corresponding to a range classical CS phenom- ena where Swedish functioned as the matrix language to English as a guest language. Youtubers appeared to utilize English structures in their discourse for the discursive benefits that CS offers and the stylistic dimension that English provides in the form of prestige and a certain cool factor. This work was intended to challenge traditional approaches to the study of inter-linguistic influence which typically has targeted loanwords and borrowings as they eventually enter dictionaries or popular texts. This study ultimately reveals that the breadth of English influence goes beyond the threatened domains wherein Swedish is already known to be losing ground. keywords: spoken discourse, anglicism, code-switching 2 Introduction The multilingual fabric of modern Europe is characterized by the coexistence of new and old immigrant languages with the continent’s many endemic languages and threaded together by varying degrees of English proficiency with the highest levels of proficiency concentrated in and around Northern Europe. According to the EF English 3 English in Spoken Swedish Discourse: A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities 4 Proficiency Index (EF EPI) - a global and adaptive test of English reading and listening skills - Europe enjoys the highest levels of English proficiency of any otherwise non-anglophone region in the world. As shown in Image 1, there are five main tiers of English proficiency in Europe: the first and highest proficiency tier is concentrated in Northern Europe with the Netherlands followed by Sweden as the top two perform- ers. The second tier expands out and largely southeastward into the German- and parts of the Slavic-speaking world with Germany and Austria heading that tier. The third through fifth tiers expand out further east- and southward ultimately reaching Turkey and Azerbaijan. Image 1. Ranking of EF standard English Test, scoring computed by average percentage of correct answers. Northern European countries have a number of factors in common at the policy and cultural level which contribute to generally high English competence: starting in primary school, English is taught as a mandatory foreign language. In the classroom, teaching methods tend to emphasize communicative proficiency rather than grammat- ical accuracy, fostering effective communication skills early on. This high proficiency as a consequence of each nation’s education system combined with the heavy consumption of anglophone media in the form of television, film, music, and the like, frame the intersectional and intensive influence of modern varieties of English on the overall linguistic repertoires of Northern European populations. Europeans are not only bom- barded with English in their respective school systems and in their media consumption habits; Northern Europeans, as a consequence of aberrant wealth, can and do travel often, using English as a lingua franca. English is also used as a lingua franca among Europeans of disparate national origins and in general among people in the region who 4 English in Spoken Swedish Discourse: A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities 5 do not share comparable proficiency in another non-anglophone tongue (“EF English Proficiency Index, Europe”, 2018). There is even a popular notion that if you speak English there is perhaps no reason to learn other European languages, especially languages with smaller speaker populations and spheres of influences such as Dutch or Swedish. This is all to say that English is a very prominent skill in the Northern Euro- pean region and as such, very salient in the minds of its residents. Broadly speaking, I am interested in the ways in which English prominence might be disrupting the overall linguistic ecosystem of the region. Historically, lingua francas have been powerful vehicles for both gradual and relatively quick linguistic change. How might English, in this way, be affecting the on-the-ground realities of other modern languages? Having lived for a number of years in Sweden and as a native English speaker, I had to contend personally with the prominence of English as I endeavored to learn Swedish to fluency. Learning a new language as an adult is notoriously effortful, par- ticularly in the early stages; it is made still more difficult when the speaker population with whom you are dealing is also highly proficient in your mother tongue. When learning Swedish in Sweden it is often simpler to fall back on English once your linguistic resources have been drained yet communication must continue. Through insis- tence and a tremendous amount of patience, I persevered and managed to gain a great deal of competence in spoken Swedish, however several aspects of the process were striking to me: first, that tendency to rely on a more dominant language in the earlier phases of language learning, often referred to as crutching in linguistics, had a peculiar cadence when the language I was falling back on was English; I noticed that Swedes themselves would sometimes get tripped up when racking their mental lexicons for certain vocabulary and terminology, often resorting to English words or phrases when Swedish equivalents weren’t quickly accessible to them. English’s general salience in the minds of Swedish people seemed to lead to competition with what would be the appropriate Swedish correspondences, and English often won out in the end. For example, when mentally scouring for an applicable term a Swedish speaker might opt for the word research originating from English instead of the more established Swedish equivalent undersökning. In this way, where there seemed to exist lexical instability be- tween an anglicism and a codified Swedish lexeme, Swedes seemed to lean toward the English option. I also noticed a tendency among Swedish speakers, especially younger Swedes, to inject a variety of anglicisms into their speech, sometimes even a multitude within a single conversation. The varieties of English structures ranged from single words to whole utterances. For example, one might frequently overhear teenagers tacking on tags or adding discourse markers such as basically, anyway, or ya know and using set expressions like I love you or makes sense. The sometimes overwhelming amount 5 English in Spoken Swedish Discourse: A Look at Swedish Youtube Celebrities 6 of English present in otherwise Swedish discourse made my initial crutching on my native English less problematic and even naturalistic when used strategically and in accordance with the Swedish fashion; although the insertion of English is certainly a very productive phenomenon, there did seem to be structures and contexts where anglicisms seemed to violate a native Swedish speakers’ intuitions about their use. In other words, the use of anglicisms appeared to be systematic. A similar pattern of regularized anglicism usage also stood out to me when I arrived in the Netherlands and began listening to and engaging with people from the Dutch-speaking world. This hinted to me that a greater pattern was perhaps at work here. These instances I describe are familiar to Swedes, the Dutch, and other North- ern

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