The Transience of American Swedish (review)

The book under review is an interesting addition to the ever-increasing body of research being produced generally in the fields of language contact and attrition and specifically in Scandinavian studies. What makes the present investigation of particular interest is its unique corpus: Klintborg’s study is based upon turn of the century recordings collected by the Emigrant Institute in Växjö, Sweden. More specifically, the corpus is composed of 50 samples culled from the Lennart Setterdahl collection.

By comparison to the impressive size and scope of many linguistic corpora routinely used today, K’s sample may seem rather paltry. However, in the end, the researcher successfully demonstrates how smaller corpora can also reveal many important linguistic insights when carefully constructed. Accordingly, his corpora represent a relatively homogenous sample of American immigrants from all over Sweden, including Gotland and Lapland. The recordings were all taken from Swedish immigrants born at the turn of the twentieth century (ranging in age from 68 to 98 at the point of interview) who were predominantly farmers and laborers with limited formal education.

To avoid confounding the linguistic data with outside linguistic influences, care was taken to ensure that none of the respondents interviewed had lived outside of Sweden and North America. This precaution also makes possible future comparisons between K’s sample and others featuring Swedish immigrants living in other English-speaking countries (e.g. Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand).

The focus of K’s study is the identification of English interference in the lexical and grammatical patterns in the Swedish of American Swedes. Unfortunately, comparatively little analysis is provided of the phonological alterations. Nevertheless, the nonphonological information which was provided is still of interest. For example, several alterations in the respondents’ assignment of gender and plurality were identified. These findings are especially interesting given the influence both have upon the overall morphological structure of open-class words (e.g. nouns, adjectives, and adverbs). K’s examination of closed-class words is also productive.

As the author states, all too often the effect of language contact upon prepositions, conjunctions, and numerals is assumed rather than tested, and he asserts that in some cases such assumptions may have been premature. For example, in the past it has been assumed that the production of prepositions among bilinguals is directly related to the acquisition of language-specific cognitions relating to, for example, spatial and temporal relationships. However, according to K, the production of such closed-class words may sometimes be less a function of deep-structure correspondences than simple, surface similarities such as homophony.

Although readers more expert in the area of cross-linguistic analysis may find the author’s analyses somewhat basic, the clear and engaging writing style punctuated by lively, often humorous, examples makes the book a satisfying read. In the end, it can be recommended to anyone generally interested in the effects of language contact among immigrant populations.