Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Page 155

use of English in spoken language and on social media. Vanessa shows convinc-
ingly that the informants in her study know what they are doing when they nav-
igate between different languages and language varieties.
In this light, there should be no doubt that the topic Vanessa has chosen for
her dissertation is highly relevant in the field of Icelandic studies. We need to
know and understand how Icelanders use language on social media and why the
language use is the way it is.
Thus far, the topic “language use on Facebook” has not received very much
attention from linguists in Iceland. The studies that do exist are mainly quanti-
tative and focus on the formal aspects of language. They do not look at the inter-
action between Facebook users and the way they construct meaning collectively:
How we use language to perform our identity and how we shape and design our
messages with a particular audience in mind. Therefore, Vanessa is in many ways
a groundbreaker, and I hope that her thesis will spark a larger interest in this
topic in Iceland and that her work will get the attention that it deserves.
Vanessa describes her main objectives with the following words: “to investi-
gate linguistic practices of native Icelandic speakers on Facebook with due regard
to persisting ideas about a linguistically conservative and stable Icelandic speech
community.” As this quote indicates, Vanessa aims to map the linguistic practices
on Facebook and to discuss them in the light of traditional ideas about the
Icelandic language. Hence, the point of departure is the changing language situ-
ation in Iceland which is described and discussed in the first part of the thesis. In
that chapter, Vanessa, with support from previous studies, describes Icelandic
speakers as rather conservative. In surveys, the majority of people say that they
prefer the use of Icelandic neologisms instead of the use of borrowings from
English and other languages. However, as she also points out, the situation may
be changing. Other studies have shown that the younger generations are more
positive toward English influence than the older ones and that the use of English
borrowings has become the discursive norm, especially among young people.
In order to address the topic, Vanessa uses three different methods to con-
duct three separate studies: a matched-guise test to measure attitudes toward dif-
ferent styles of writing, a frequency analysis to investigate the formal character-
istics of data collected from Facebook timelines and a qualitative analysis of the
same data using theories on identity work and audience design. The emphasis is
mainly on qualitative analysis, and the first two studies are used to shed light on
certain aspects of the analysis presented in the last two chapters before the sum-
mary. In my view, the qualitative analysis is the strongest and most interesting
contribution of the thesis.
The different studies presented in the thesis call for three different data sets:
statistical data elicited in an experimental setting, authentic posts written by
Facebook users on their own timelines, and interviews with informants that
reflect on their Facebook behaviour. In other words, Vanessa shows that she
Comments and discussion points from the first opponent 155