Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Page 166

andreas candefors stæhr
Comments and discussion points
from the second opponent at the doctoral defense
of Vanessa Monika Isenmann
with the candidate’s replies

1. Introduction
It has been a pleasure to read and comment on this dissertation — not least
because Vanessa Isenmann writes in clear and concise language and presents the
data, analysis and results in an orderly fashion. Vanessa engages in an interesting
and timely topic, which has been largely understudied in the field of Icelandic
language studies — at least until recent years. In the following, I discuss some of
the results of the dissertation and what wider consequences digital language use
may have on the Icelandic language in general. Prior to this, I present some of the
major strengths of Vanessa’s work and comment on the methodological ground-
ing of the dissertation and its impressive analytical diversity.

2. The main strengths of the dissertation
The main strengths of Vanessa’s dissertation can be summed up in four points.
Firstly, the dissertation provides an unprecedented and empirically based insight
into the digital language practices of Icelandic Facebook users — and not least
their metalinguistic reflections on digital language practices. Secondly, the thesis
is characterized by an impressive methodological diversity (which I will return to
later on). Thirdly, the dissertation documents changes, new trends and new con-
texts in written Icelandic. Finally, the dissertation includes a detailed analysis of
how some of the participants navigate between audiences through the means of
code-alternation practices — practices that bear evidence of a heightened sense of
linguistic reflexivity of the participants, which could challenge the established
notion of “context collapse” in social media settings. I will return to this point in
the discussion part.
The methodological approach of the dissertation also deserves to be mentioned
here, because Vanessa manages to bridge qualitative and quantitative methodolo-
gies by both carrying out an experimental language attitude study, a fully-fledged