Research on spoken Finnish
Research on spoken Finnish focuses on linguistic variation and the verbal
and non-verbal construction of interactional practices in the present-day
Finnish speaking communities. We carry out field work as part of our data
collection and organize field trips.
In our research, we combine methods of conversation analysis, sociolinguistic
variation analysis and functional linguistics. In addition to the scientific
communities, we also present our research to the ordinary language users.
At the moment we are carrying out a project for studying interactional
practices, linguistic variation and language attitudes in an
Another current project is the follow-up study of the dialects of Finnish. It
is a longitudinal study on the change and maintenance of rural dialects in 10
towns in different parts of
We are completing the reporting of a project on interaction and linguistic
variation in service encounters (especially in social insurance offices and at
kiosks).
Published in English
Monographs
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena 2001: Responding in conversation. A study of response particles in Finnish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Articles
Kärkkäinen, Elise & Sorjonen,
Marja-Leena & Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa 2007: Discource structure. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language
typology and syntactic description. Volume II: Complex constructions, p. 301–371.
Second edition.
Sorjonen,
Marja-Leena 2002: Recipient activities: the particle "no" as a
go-ahead response in Finnish conversations. In Cecilia E. Ford, Barbara A. Fox
and Sandra A. Thompson (eds): The language of turn and sequence, p.
165-195.
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena
2001: Simple answers to polar questions: the case of Finnish. In Margret
Selting and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen (eds): Studies in interactional
linguistics, p. 405-431.
