At the beginning of my studies in Joensuu, perhaps the two most fascinating courses were dialects and sociolinguistics – the regional and social variation of language. Yet the lure of interaction studies proved stronger. In the 1980s there was still a deep gulf between the basic premises of sociolinguistics and conversation analysis. The sociolinguistic conception of language usage and the social identities of people appeared static, while conversation analytic research didn’t seem to extend to wider society; sociolinguists were tabulating phonetic and morphological features from large corpora, conversation analysts were going over short conversation excerpts with a fine-toothed comb.

Today the conception of creating meaning in language and the relationship between language and society is different.

In a recently concluded research project of mine funded by the Academy of Finland, Helsingin suomea: monimuotoisuus, sosiaalinen identiteetti ja kielelliset asenteet kaupunkiympäristössä (‘Helsinki Finnish: Diversity, Social Identity, and Linguistic Attitudes in an Urban Environment’) both sociolinguists and conversation analysts jointly reviewed and re-evaluated research methods and key concepts alongside solid empirical research. We investigated, for example, notions of how “foreigners” speak, the interplay between slang and religious language, as well as ways speakers categorised themselves and others in the course of an interaction. The project’s findings were published as the book Helsingissä puhuttavat suomet. Kielen indeksisyys ja sosiaaliset identiteetit (‘Varieties of Finnish Spoken in Helsinki. The indexicality of language and social identities’) (eds. Marja-Leena Sorjonen, Anu Rouhikoski and Heini Lehtonen).

The intricacy of language variation, the use of variation as a resource for interaction and as a medium for identity is a research subject of perennial importance. In particular, the accelerating multilingualisation of our own language community and the expanding range of languages are in evidence everywhere in society.