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Industrial urbanization, working-class lads and slang toponyms in early twentieth-century Helsinki

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

HEIKKI PAUNONEN ,
JANI VUOLTEENAHO  and
TERHI AINIALA
HEIKKI PAUNONEN
Affiliation:
Department of Finnish Language and Literature, University of Helsinki, PO Box 4, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland
JANI VUOLTEENAHO
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64, FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland
TERHI AINIALA
Affiliation:
Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, Vuorikatu 24, FI-00100, Helsinki, Finland
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Abstract:

The article investigates the linkages between urban transformation and informal verbalizations of everyday spaces among male juveniles from Sörnäinen (a working-class district in Helsinki) in 1900–39. Sörkka lads' biographically and contextually varying uses of slang names mirrored their itineraries across the city in the search of earning and spare-time opportunities. As a simultaneously practical and stylistic street language, the uses of slang both eroded (in uniting bilingual male juvenile groups) and strengthened (as with providers and teachers, working-class girls, upper-class urbanites and rural newcomers) existing socio-spatial boundaries. Unlike in the late nineteenth century Stockholmska slang studied by Pred, openly irreverent toponymic expressions vis-à-vis the hegemonic conceptions of urban space were relatively few in early Helsinki slang.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , December 2009 , pp. 449 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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61 Pred, Lost Words.

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