By: Sara Laitinen, Minna Leppänen and Anniina Mutanen
Background and aims
Twitter is an online social networking site that allows its users to communicate with their followers in 140 characters or less. The service was launched in 2006 and since then it has gained a huge popularity; at the end of 2015 Twitter had over 320 million monthly active users around the world (Statista 2016).
According to Marwick and boyd (2011b), social networking sites, such as Twitter, are changing celebrity culture. Twitter allows celebrities to communicate with their fans more intimately and actively than before, and gives fans an opportunity to communicate directly with their idols. Furthermore, celebrities can play an active part in constructing their public image through interaction with their fans on Twitter (Marwick and boyd 2011b:155). Therefore, celebrities’ language choices on social media can affect the way the public perceives them.
In 2013, 34% of all tweets in the world were written in English, making it clearly the most popular language on Twitter (Statista 2013). Since the role of English in Finland is continuously becoming more visible especially in new media contexts (Leppänen et al. 2011), it is only natural that many Finns also use English on Twitter and other social media sites. The aim of our project was, firstly, to find out how much and what kind of English is being used on Twitter by certain Finnish celebrities and, secondly, what is the message these celebrities are sending by choosing to use English in their tweets. For the project, we chose three Finnish celebrities who are relatively active on Twitter: Alexander Stubb, Arman Alizad and Teemu Selänne.
Analysis
Alexander Stubb
Alexander Stubb is a Finnish politician who currently serves as Minister of Finance in Finland. Due to his Finnish-Swedish bilingual upbringing and previous positions as a member of the European Parliament, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister, Stubb has strong international connections and is fluent in several languages. This is also evident in Stubb’s language use on social media.
Stubb is a very active Twitter user, occasionally tweeting several times a day. Stubb’s tweets generally concern politics and other work-related matters and rarely reveal anything about his personal life. In March 2016, Stubb tweeted altogether 64 times, excluding re-tweets and responses to other Twitter users. Out of these 64 tweets, 14 were written entirely in English ( 22 % of the tweets) and one in Swedish (1,5% of the tweets). His language choices seem to have a clear function: the tweets written in English are aimed at an international audience, whereas the tweets written in Finnish are often about local politics or Stubb’s public appearances in Finland. Below, there are four tweets that clearly show the difference between target audiences of Stubb’s tweets in English and Finnish. Some of Stubb’s tweets specifically concern Finnish politics, hence writing them in English would be unnecessary. However, Stubb also regularly takes a stance on EU politics and therefore writes these tweets in English for all of Europe (and the world) to understand.
In general, Stubb doesn’t use code-mixing in his tweets but sometimes he translates the same message into several languages within the same tweet or in two or three separate tweets. This highlights his international orientation and good language skills. Furthermore, using several languages gives an impression that Stubb wants everyone to understand his message.
As mentioned earlier, Stubb uses Twitter mainly to discuss his work and politics. However, when sharing some of his more personal opinions and thoughts, Stubb’s language choice seems to be Finnish, as can be seen from the tweets below. This is most likely due to the fact that Finnish is one of Stubb’s mother tongues and the target audience for the more personal tweets are his Finnish voters. By sharing something personal about himself, Stubb makes himself more relatable and familiar to his voters, which, for a politician, is quite beneficial.
Overall, whether he tweets in Finnish, English or Swedish, the language Stubb uses is quite formal; he does not use slang words, colloquial expressions or mix many languages into the same sentence. This can be seen as a deliberate attempt to keep up his professional public image also on social media.
Arman Alizad
Arman Alizad is a Finnish TV-personality, a producer and a tailor. He is particularly well-known for his reality TV-shows, some of which are aired in over hundred countries. Alizad is known for expressing his opinions on even the most sensitive of subjects, such as racism and immigration. He is an active social media user; on Twitter, for example, he wrote many tweets, re-tweets and comments during this period of one month. Most of Alizad’s tweets and comments on Twitter are in Finnish. These tweets usually advertise his new Finnish TV-show, discuss the problems of Finnish society, or comment on other tweets that are in Finnish. Many tweets, however, include also English in one form or another.
Alizad’s tweets that are completely in English are not common. They are normally comprised of simple phrases or single words. The first example of a tweet completely in English is his comment on an award given to him. The comment is not a complete sentence, since it does not contain a verb, and it seems to be in English mainly because the original tweet is in English. The following examples, “NO CHILL” and “SAVAGE”, show how Alizad uses trendy words to comment on other tweets. These words are often used on the internet and particularly among young people, and thus it seems that Alizad uses them for this reason. His followers most likely know what they mean, and hence they do not have to be translated into Finnish. The same reasoning could be applied to his use of the popular abbreviation “Omg” (Oh my god) in another comment. Another tweet completely in English is a meme concerning immigration. In this case English is most likely used because it is generally used in memes, but the meme could have also been made by someone else. Overall, these examples show that Alizad is not really using English for conveying messages to non-Finnish audiences; instead, he is using the language because the words are already commonly used in this form on the internet and in Finland. By using these kinds of words he is also constructing his public image as quite trendy.
Some of Alizad’s tweets contain code-switching between Finnish and English. The first example, taking a stand to the controversy that arose from Terhi Kiemunki’s controversial Facebook updates on immigrants*, has the structure “Will the real … please stand up” in it. It is known from the television game show To tell the truth, and these days it is used in other areas of pop-culture as well (such as in Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady). The main point of the tweet is that Terhi Kiemunki is presented as the real Easter witch (pääsiäisnoita). The most important information in the tweet is in Finnish, and hence the tweet is targeted to Finnish audiences. Alizad has therefore used this common English saying to give his tweet a distinct form and meaning that people can connect to the American culture. In addition, some other tweets by Alizad include a beginning in Finnish and an ending in English. Adding a sentence like “RT like there’s no tomorrow”, which includes a Twitter-based abbreviation RT (Retweet) and an idiom indicates that he and his followers are familiar with the customs of Twitter. Adding abbreviations such as lol or omg and using the phrase Game Over demonstrate that he understands how English is commonly used on the internet. In conclusion, it is quite clear that Alizad uses English for entertainment purposes even when criticising domestic issues. His followers must know Finnish in order to understand the tweets, and hence he is merely connecting the tweets to international trends and pop-culture by using English.
Hybrid forms can also be found in some of Alizad’s tweets. The first example contains the word chopper, which has not been translated into Finnish. The word has been inflected to fit the otherwise Finnish sentence by changing the morphology with the Finnish –ia ending. The second example has the word edit in it, and it has undergone a similar process as chopper. The difference between these two examples is that the word edit could have been easily translated into Finnish, whereas for chopper the direct translation could have been more difficult to find. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Alizad uses and inflects English words that are already commonly used either in the Finnish language or in his professional jargon. To sum up, Alizad uses English in his tweets in many ways. Some tweets are completely in English and some contain English-originated words that have been inflected according to the Finnish grammar. English is mainly used for entertainment purposes, and his followers do not really need to know the language in order to understand his tweets. Alizad is therefore constructing his public image as a Finn who understands the modern and popular words and conventions of the internet, and who can express his opinions on even the most sensitive of subjects.
Teemu Selänne
Teemu Selänne is a retired ice hockey player who currently lives in California, United States. He is not only known by the Finnish ice hockey audience but also by the whole sporting world. Selänne uses Twitter quite actively, and he also retweets plenty of other people’s posts on the topics that he is interested in. However, he is clearly the least active tweeter of the three. As expected, most of the tweets written by Selänne himself were concerning sports, since he is enthusiastic about the issue. Interestingly, ice hockey was not the only sport discussed, but the tweets also show interest in a large variety of sports. Selänne is commenting for example on Formula 1 series, rally events, golf and basketball. In addition, Selänne expresses his opinions about other issues a few times in Twitter and for that purpose he uses Finnish. English seems to serve a more general purpose.
Selänne’s tweets from the time period were written in both English and Finnish. Most of the English tweets are written completely monolingual, whereas individual English words small phrases appear mixed with Finnish. For example, words such as “passion” and “respect” are connected to posts about Finnish ice hockey culture. The words could have as well been written in Finnish, but especially “respect” is a common loanword from English that appears in sports contexts quite frequently. In addition, a non-Finnish speaker can understand the tweet by connecting Aarne Honkavaara** with respect without knowing Finnish.
The language itself seems to be working as an identifier of culture that connects the text into a certain contexts as well as targets a specified audience whether it is Finnish ice hockey fans, Finnish people in general or a rally community. Selänne has more than 100 000 followers on Twitter, which may well be the reason for his active English use; he seems to want his non-Finnish fans and followers to understand his tweets. If a post is directed to the Finnish audience, regarding for example the Finnish hockey league or current issues in Finland, Selänne chooses to use Finnish probably for the same reason: to make sure his Finnish fans understand his messages. Only 11 tweets from the year 2016 included Finnish, which highlights the meaning of language since the usage of it is so rare and specified according to purpose. For example, a new show featuring Selänne and other famous Finnish athletes started on Nelonen in april 2016. When tweeting about the show, Selänne uses Finnish, since the entire context of the show is Finnish and interests Finnish people. “Showtime” is a common loanword that in this context opens the idea of the picture to non-Finnish people. Moreover, using Finnish seems to be a way of identifying with and relating to Finnish culture and lifestyle, even though Selänne himself has not lived in Finland for a long time. A good example of this is a congratulations tweet to a passionate fan of Selänne’s first professional hockey team Jokerit.
Moreover, mixing languages together or using hybrid forms is not common in Selänne’s tweets. The only example of a hybrid form is “liideri” which comes from the English word “leader”. He also rarely uses loan words, with the exception of “fani” when talking about the fan of Jokerit. This tells that Selänne’s language use on Twitter is mostly monolingual within a single tweet and rarely includes wordplay.
Conclusion
Twitter is a very popular social media site these days, and it is used by a large number of people. It is also used among celebrities, who can easily communicate with their fans with its aid (Marwick and boyd 2011b). The three Finns, Alexander Stubb, Arman Alizad and Teemu Selänne, were chosen for this project due to their similarities; they are all famous Finnish men and roughly the same age. Hence the differences in their use of Twitter are more likely to be caused by factors such as their professions or public images, and not by their age or gender.
Although all three men use both English and Finnish in their tweets, the ways of using the two languages differ somewhat from each other. Stubb and Selänne do not often use code-switching in their tweets, but choose one language according to the target audience of the tweet. Alizad, on the other hand, uses the two languages more freely, sometimes mixing them together and using English loan words and slang words in otherwise Finnish tweets. Alizan also tweets more for entertaining purposes than Stubb and Selänne.
As Marwick and boyd (2011a) argue, social media users understand that they are addressing an audience when they are, for example, tweeting. Hence they take the audience into consideration when deciding the contents, structures and words of their tweets. This was noticeable in this project as well. The different uses of the English language can be seen as conscious choices to construct a certain kind of public image and to appeal to selected audiences. The three celebrities are constructing their public images through their use of Twitter. Stubb’s public image can be seen as very official and politically correct, which is quite understandable for his position as a minister. Alizad, in turn, is very entertaining and honest, and he does not avoid controversial topics. Selänne, on the other hand, can be seen as quite official, even though he is very passionate about sports. It is therefore clear that their professions and desired public images affect their tweeting.
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* Terhi Kiemunki posted controversial (and racist) updates on Facebook during Easter 2016. In these updates she criticised immigrant children who took part in Finnish and Christian Easter traditions. She commented on how the immigrant girls looked like witches due to their hijabs, and how these children should not reproduce. She also mentioned Allah a few times, and not always with positive associations.
**Aarne Honkavaara was an iconic Finnish ice-hockey player and coach. He played in the 1940s and performed in the Finnish national team numerous times.
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