The paper explores drawings on ‘Finnish language’ by primary school pupils and teacher trainees. It concentrates especially on the represented connection of language, nationality and nation as well as on the differences that the multilingualism of the participants creates in the drawings.
In my paper, I explore drawings on ‘Finnish language’ by primary school pupils and teacher trainees. I will concentrate on the represented connection of language, nationality and nation as well as on the differences that the multilingualism of the participants creates in the drawings. The drawing task data set is part of my ongoing PhD study, which examines the existing and developing language ideologies in Finnish basic education. From the visual data I analyze such values and views on Finnish language and its speakers that are circulated in everyday school life in naturalized ways. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) drawing is a way of producing images of reality. Drawings are interrelated with the interests of the social institution they are produced in, which makes them ideological. As an object of analysis, drawings are fruitful, because drawing a language on a paper requires designing of different elements or a wider picture. The process of designing includes decision making, which activates ideologies. (Pietikäinen & Pitkänen-Huhta 2017.) The analysis indicates that even though Finnish language is represented in many ways in the drawings, certain kinds of representations keep on repeating and build a discourse of national Finnish language that only Finns speak. The language is considered very difficult for immigrants. On the other hand, among multilingual participants Finnish language is represented as only one of the many languages of multilingual everyday life. It seems that multilingual school environments might be able to dissolve perceptions that build boundaries and national stereotypes between different languages and their speakers. Kress, G. – van Leeuwen, T. 2006: Reading images. The grammar of visual design. Second edition. New York: Routledge. Pietikäinen, S. – Pitkänen-Huhta, A. 2017: Visual methods in researching language practices and language learning. – Research Methods in Language and Education s. 393–405. Amsterdam: Springer.
