AFinLA (Association Finlandaise de Linguistique Appliquée) awards the Afinlandia prize annually for a distinguished Master’s thesis, and every three years for a Doctoral dissertation. This year, the prize was awarded in the Master’s thesis series. Several theses of outstanding quality were nominated from multiple areas of applied linguistics and numerous Finnish universities. The awardee was announced on November 13th during the conference dinner of AFinLA Symposium.
This year, the awardee is:
Sulo Vierula (University of Turku) for their Master’s thesis titled Suomenkielisten äänikokemusten rakentuminen ja repertuaarit: Tutkimus auditoris-verbaalisten hallusinaatioiden puheesta ja sen suhteesta kuulijoiden identiteettipiirteisiin
The award-winning work examines the language of hallucinations and thus addresses issues of mental health, highlighting a marginalized, stigmatized, and vulnerable group of language users and language form. The study focusses especially on the identity characteristics of auditory experiences in relation to their listeners: for example, do the voices use the same age-related vocabulary as their listeners, and do the auditory experiences and listeners share a similar dialect repertoire. The study draws on folk linguistics, the study of regional variation, critical sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. The work demonstrates a broad knowledge of the theoretical background and is methodologically very well executed. Furthermore, the study is timely, and it has societal relevence.
In addition to the Afinlandia Award presented, AFinLA also wishes to give a special honorable mention to the following outstanding master’s thesis:
Iiris Helinä (University of Helsinki): Kasvattaa naudanlihaa ja kompostoida kuolleita kaloja: Kuolleeseen eläimeen viittaamisen keinot sanomalehtiaineistossa
For details, please contact:
AFinLA ry., Afinlandia-koordinaattorit
Elina Vasu, elina.vasu@tuni.fi, puh. 050 432 6970
Dmitri Leontjev, dmitri.leontjev@jyu.fi
Tiina Räisänen, tiina.raisanen@oulu.fi
AFinLA ry.: https://www.afinla.fi/en/