In the article, spatializations (discourses of ideal or stereotyped spaces) are conceptualized as powerful discourses of the surrounding society, providing resources for place‐bound identity construction in interaction. We combine a sociolinguistic analysis with Bakhtinian dialogism to understand how such “third” voices in dialogue empower and pluralize self‐ and other‐positionings embedded in the evocations of unofficial place names. Empirically, the focus is on toponyms that divide the socially mixed Vuosaari suburb in Helsinki into “older” and “newer” territories. The results show that when the stereotypes of “good” and “bad” neighbourhoods or other spatializations interpenetrate the uses of “Old” and “New Vuosaari,” they open room for the (re‐)voicing of the meanings of these toponyms for highly differentiated social ends. With the Bakhtinian framework bridging between socio‐spatial theory and sociolinguistics, the article develops a spatially sensitized approach to analyse the entanglements of the micro‐level contexts of interaction with the macro‐level discourses of meaning‐giving.

This research and practice project studies the way in which some aspects of linguistic order are also found in music’s order. Whereas some aspects of order and organisation are attributed to music because of their psychophysical integration, other aspects seem to be more related to the configuration of music in memory and experience (i.e. individual memory and memory-in-society processes). This fundamental condition is shared with speech and visual symbolizing. Since order in music is commonly referred and/or justified by verbal or visual language, several cases of analogy and metaphor are studied, in the context of music composition and analysis. This project also discusses the role of figuration and referentiality in some examples of geometry associated with musical ideas, in order to analyse how such mediums are intertwined with speech and musical constructions.

Patients with post-stroke impairments present often significant variation in response to therapeutic interventions. Recent studies have shown that daily music listening can aid post-stroke recovery of language and memory, but reliable predictors of treatment response are unknown. Utilizing data from the music intervention arms of a single-blind randomized controlled trial (RCT) on stroke patients (N = 31), we built regression models to predict the treatment response of a two-month music listening intervention on language skills and verbal memory with baseline demographic, clinical and musical data as well as fMRI data from a music listening task. Clinically, greater improvement in verbal memory and language skills after the music listening intervention were predicted by the severity of the initial deficit and educational level. Neurally, greater baseline fMRI activation during vocal music listening in the left parietal cortical and medial frontal areas predicted greater treatment-induced improvement in language skills and greater baseline engagement of the auditory network during instrumental music listening predicted improvement in both verbal memory and language skills. Our results suggest that clinical, demographic, and neuroimaging data predicts music listening treatment response. This data could be used clinically to target music-based treatments.

The issue of translatability is pressing in international evaluation, in global transfer of evaluative instruments, in comparative performance management, and in culturally responsive evaluation. Terms that are never fully understood, digested, or accepted may continue to influence issues, problems, and social interactions in and around and after evaluations. Their meanings can be imposed or reinvented. Untranslatable terms are not just lost in translation but may produce overflows that do not go away. The purpose of this article is to increase attention to the issue of translatability in evaluation by means of specific exemplars. We provide a short dictionary of such exemplars delivered by evaluators, consultants, and teachers who work across a variety of contexts. We conclude with a few recommendations: highlight frictions in translatability by deliberately circulating and discussing words of relevance that appear to be foreign; increase the language skills of evaluators; and make research on frictions in translation an articulate part of the agenda for research on evaluation.

Neuroimaging studies of the reading process point to functionally distinct stages in word recognition. Yet, current understanding of the operations linked to those various stages is mainly descriptive in nature. Approaches developed in the field of computational linguistics may offer a more quantitative approach for understanding brain dynamics. Our aim was to evaluate whether a statistical model of morphology, with well-defined computational principles, can capture the neural dynamics of reading, using the concept of surprisal from information theory as the common measure. The Morfessor model, created for unsupervised discovery of morphemes, is based on the minimum description length principle and attempts to find optimal units of representation for complex words. In a word recognition task, we correlated brain responses to word surprisal values derived from Morfessor and from other psycholinguistic variables that have been linked with various levels of linguistic abstraction. The magnetoencephalography data analysis focused on spatially, temporally and functionally distinct components of cortical activation observed in reading tasks. The early occipital and occipito-temporal responses were correlated with parameters relating to visual complexity and orthographic properties, whereas the later bilateral superior temporal activation was correlated with whole-word based and morphological models. The results show that the word processing costs estimated by the statistical Morfessor model are relevant for brain dynamics of reading during late processing stages.

International student action is characterised by cross border mobility and maintaining contacts around the world. English language is a significant aspect of internationalisation of higher education and an important factor in students’ endeavours of mobility. Transnationalism examines mobility through networks of interaction and dependence that span across state borders. In the context of the individual this means social connections formed and maintained simultaneously to country of origin and new place of residence. The purpose of this study is to describe the motives and experiences of foreign degree students at the University of Helsinki. This study examines especially two topics that affect foreign degree students in Finland, transnationalism and language. Qualitative research methods were used in this master’s thesis. Traditionally ethnographic methods are in the centre of anthropological inquiry. Because of the nature of the subject of this study the majority of data was collected using interviews. For this study ten foreign degree students from different stages of their studies were interviewed using a thematic interview. Additionally observations from international student events were used as data. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings of this study describe foreign degree students’ motives of mobility, forms of life management and relevance of language in their experiences. The findings show that for students coming to Finland, significant motivators are lack of tuition fees, ability to study in English, appeal of country, valuation of higher education, and personal and professional benefits. The important factors in relation to life management are adapting to a new environment, social networks, and a sense of having two homes. Additionally experiences of studies and support services as well as thoughts about the future affect life management. English language was found to facilitate forming social relations in a new environment, networking within the university and multicultural communication. On the other hand, lack of Finnish skills marginalizes foreign students in Finnish society. The importance language skills is emphasised for students who want to stay in Finland after completing their studies. This study shows the significant role language plays in the different aspects of a foreign students life. The university community offers a basis for adapting through social inclusion of students into the international student community at the university. However, further integration into Finnish society requires initiative and effort. In this study, transnationalism appears especially in the social connections maintained with country of origin, for example via social media. Social connections with homeland are significant when faced with difficulties, while social connections formed locally gain significance over time. Social relations and familiarisation with new environment enhance feelings of belonging.

Language is thoroughly bound up with wine in myriad ways, and the drinking of wine is very often accompanied with talk about it. This chapter considers the nature of wine tasting languages; the differences and rivalry between wine talk (of critics and suchlike persons) and wine language (of scientists and their allies in the wine world); how wine language is bound up with the creation of social hierarchies and senses of commonality among wine drinkers; contemporary trends towards hyper-specificity in wine vocabularies; and the changing nature of the argots in and through which wine is sold and labelled. In so doing, the chapter stresses the constantly changing, conflict-laden, and often contradictory and paradoxical nature of talk and language related to wine and wine drinking.

It is well-known that very preterm children perform at lower levels than full-term children in reading and arithmetic at school. Whether the lower performance levels of preterm children in these two separate domains have the same or different origins, however, is not clear. The present study examined the extent to which prematurity is associated with the overlap (i.e., common variance) of reading and arithmetic among Finnish school beginners. We also examined the extent to which the association of prematurity with the overlap between reading and arithmetic is due to different prereading skills, basic number skills, and general cognitive abilities. The participants (age 6-7) consisted of 193 very preterm children ( <32 weeks of gestation or birth weight <1501 g) and 175 full-term control children assessed at the beginning of Grade 1. The results showed that about 40% of the variation in reading and arithmetic skills was common to these two domains and thus, represented the overlap between reading and arithmetic. Prematurity was found to be negatively associated with the overlapping part of reading and arithmetic skills. This association was explained particularly by differences between very preterm and full-term children in prereading (letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and rapid automatized naming) and basic number skills (counting sequence knowledge): Very preterm children showed lower levels of phonological awareness, letter knowledge, counting, and rapid serial naming than full-term children and thus, also demonstrated lower skill level common for reading and arithmetic. Early screening of very preterm children according to the cognitive antecedents that predict the overlap between reading and arithmetic is needed to prevent comorbid difficulties in these domains.