Tracking Swedish-American English: A Longitudinal Study of Linguistic Variation and Identity (review)

This book examines the connection between ethnic identity and language use among older Swedish Americans. It focuses on the following issues: the impact of sustained language contact between Swedish and English on syntax, with an emphasis on the treatment of relative clauses; the use of pragmatic particles; and the role that Swedish-American English plays in presenting ethnic identity.

Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (1–23), outlines the goals and theoretical approaches of this study. It is perhaps at least mildly surprising that Karstadt uses ‘some theoretical frameworks usually reserved for pidgin and creole linguistics’ (6), but her justification of this move (Swedish-American English is ‘a contact variety exhibiting linguistic patterns similar to other varieties emerging in language-contact settings’ (6)) is convincing. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of previous research on Scandinavian language contact in the US and an overview of the study as a whole.

Ch. 2, ‘Swedish migration: Social history, linguistic consequences, and methods of analysis’ (25–88), discusses Swedish migration to the US (concentrating on Hennepin County, Minnesota and Lindsborg, Kansas, the two places where most of K’s American data was gathered), justifies the use of linguistic sampling, and then looks at the materials and methods used in K’s analysis. K drew on interviews recorded for four separate research projects, conducted from 1959 to the 1990s, comparing and evaluating the various materials against each other.

Ch. 3, ‘Relatives in contact: On relativization strategies in Swedish-American language contact’ (89–127), looks at the impact of language contact on syntax. Here K argues that the immigrant data provides evidence for two general trends: ‘a possible reduction of syntacticized embedded structures’ and ‘the simultaneous mobilization of additional pragmatic particles’ (126).

Ch. 4, ‘“And Gun-Britt denn my wife here now.” Pragmatic particles in a cross-corpora perspective’ (129–63), turns to the use of pragmatic particles. Based on a comparison of data gathered from three groups (older Swedish-American male immigrants, Swedes in Sweden, and older American-born speakers with Swedish heritage), K suggests that the first of these groups has ‘an extended set of functions’ (162) for these particles.

Ch. 5, ‘Language variability across the lifespan: A case study of two individuals’ (165–83), offers a longitudinal study of two speakers. K argues that ‘older speakers demonstrate variability’ (182) and then extends this to arguing that there is no real justification for subdividing the older respondents into age groups. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for future research.

Ch. 6, ‘Swedish-American English and hybridization in interaction’ (185–224), discusses such issues as language accomodation and the role of linguistic variation in establishing social identity. K notes, for instance, that the use of Swedish elements and nonstandard, stereotypically Swedish, phonetic variants serve as markers of ethnicity for many speakers of Swedish-American English.

Ch. 7, ‘Conclusion’ (225–33), summarizes the study and points to some topics that require further investigation. There are also two brief appendices, consisting of an excerpt from an interview transcript and several illustrations, respectively.

This is a readable, interesting study, and is to be recommended to those interested in sociolinguistics and Scandinavian languages.