Exploring the use of English on Instagram in the Finnish Capital Region: Spatial and Temporal Perspectives Niko Huhtala Master’s Thesis English Studies Faculty of Arts University of Helsinki March 2021 Faculty Degree Programme Faculty of Arts Master’s programme in English Studies Study Track Master’s programme in English Studies Author Huhtala Niko Title Exploring the use of English on Instagram in the Finnish Capital Region: Spatial and Temporal Perspectives Level Month and year Number of pages Master’s Thesis March 2021 59 Abstract This MA thesis explores the use of English on Instagram in the Finnish capital region that consists of the municipalities of Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo and Kauniainen. Building on previous research on Virtual Linguistic Landscapes and English as a lingua franca, this thesis investigates the extent to which English is used in the study area and how different types of areas and locations differ in terms of English use in the study area. For this purpose, I use geotagged social media data and methods from the fields of natural language processing and geoinformatics. Firstly, I analyse the general linguistic make-up of the study area to understand the use of English in relation to other languages. Secondly, I analyse and compare how the use of English and Finnish are spread geographically across the Finnish capital region on Instagram and identify spatial clusters by means of spatial autocorrelation analysis. Lastly, I seek to provide further insights into the different types of locations where English, Finnish and other languages are used by using the Corine Land Cover inventory for categorising different types of locations. The results of this study show that the English language has a very strong presence as the second most used language in the Virtual Linguistic Landscape of the Finnish capital region. English is used especially often by users who use more than one language on Instagram. The spatial patterns of English use show that the language is used particularly often in the Helsinki city centre, western Helsinki and eastern Espoo and least in north-eastern Helsinki and Vantaa. English has a strong presence in essentially all the studied location types, especially in commercial and urban contexts. The relative proportions of English use are highest at airport areas and lowest in various sport and leisure facilities, where Finnish is used significantly more than any other language. In the analysis, I also include frequent observations on Finnish and other languages, which provide further insights into the rich Virtual Linguistic Landscape of the capital city region. Keywords Virtual Linguistic Landscapes, English as a lingua franca, geotagged social media, Instagram, Corine Land Cover, multilingualism, spatial autocorrelation Where deposited Helsinki University Library Additional information Table of Contents 1 Introduction and Research Questions ................................................................................. 1 2 Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Physical and Virtual Linguistic Landscapes ............................................................... 3 2.2 English as a Lingua Franca and Multilingual Practices .............................................. 6 2.3 The English Language in Finland ............................................................................... 9 2.4 Ethical Considerations in Social Media Research..................................................... 10 3 Data and Methods ............................................................................................................. 11 3.1 Geotagged Instagram posts ....................................................................................... 11 3.2 Corine Land Cover Inventory ................................................................................... 13 3.3 QGIS, GeoDa and Excel ........................................................................................... 15 3.4 Spatial Autocorrelation ............................................................................................. 16 4 Analysis and Results ......................................................................................................... 18 4.1 General statistics and temporal patterns .................................................................... 18 4.2 The Spatial Distribution of English and Finnish ....................................................... 23 4.3 Corine Land Cover Classes ....................................................................................... 29 4.3.1 Urban environments ........................................................................................... 33 4.3.2 Transportation .................................................................................................... 38 4.3.3 Recreational and natural areas ........................................................................... 42 5 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 45 5.1 Limitations of the study............................................................................................. 45 5.2 Research Questions ................................................................................................... 48 5.3 Suggestions for further research ................................................................................ 51 6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 53 7 References ........................................................................................................................ 53 8 Appendices ....................................................................................................................... 59 Tables: Table 1. Top 16 languages – General statistics. ....................................................................... 19 Table 2. Multilingual users. ..................................................................................................... 20 Table 3. CLC classes - Distribution of English. ...................................................................... 30 Table 4. CLC classes - Distribution of Finnish........................................................................ 30 Table 5. CLC classes - Distribution of languages other than English and Finnish. ................ 31 Figures: Figure 1. Main axis & bars: Monthly total of sentences in English, Finnish and other languages. Secondary axis & lines: Relative proportions of English, Finnish and the combined total of all other languages per month. ...................................................................................................... 21 Figure 2. Daily temporal patterns in the Finnish capital region. Line: average number of sentences per hour. Grey area: standard deviation. .................................................................. 22 Figure 3. Weekly temporal patterns in the Finnish capital region. Line: average number of sentences per hour. Grey area: standard deviation. .................................................................. 22 Figure 4. Population density in the Finnish capital region in 2016 . ....................................... 23 Figure 5. Spatial distribution of English. ................................................................................. 24 Figure 6. Spatial distribution of Finnish. ................................................................................. 24 Figure 7. Spatial distribution of English – Relative difference from average (38% of all posts). .................................................................................................................................................. 25 Figure 8. Spatial distribution of Finnish – Relative difference from average (51% of all posts). .................................................................................................................................................. 26 Figure 9. Spatial distribution of English – statistically significant spatial clusters. ................ 27 Figure 10. Spatial distribution of Finnish – statistically significant spatial clusters. .............. 27 Figure 11. Total number of sentences in each CLC class. ....................................................... 32 Figure 12. Relative differences from sentence averages (English 36.7%, Finnish 50.6%, other languages 12.7%) in each CLC class. ...................................................................................... 32 Figure 13. Urban environments. Differences from the sentence averages. ............................. 33 Figure 14. Urban environments. Main axes & bars: Monthly total of sentences in English, Finnish and other languages. Secondary axis & lines: Relative proportions of English, Finnish and the combined total of all other languages per month. ....................................................... 33 Figure 15. Daily and weekly temporal patterns in Commercial units. Line: average number of sentences per hour/day. Grey area: standard deviation. ........................................................... 35 Figure 16. Daily and weekly temporal patterns in Urban fabric. Line: average number of sentences per hour/day. Grey area: standard deviation. ........................................................... 36 Figure 17. Daily and weekly temporal patterns