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 is awarded in the Master’s thesis series. Several thesis of outstanding quality were nominated from multiple areas of applied linguistics and numerous Finnish universities. The awardee was announced on 12.11, during the conference dinner organized in conjunction with the AFinLA 50th Anniversary Symposium.
This year, the awardee is: Anni Hintikka (University of Turku) for her Master’s thesis La reconnaissance des mots cognats anglais-français chez les apprenants finnophones: Le rôle de la similarité phonologique.
Hintikka’s thesis, set in the field of psycholinguistics, examines word recognition of cognates across two languages: French and English. The panel of judges was impressed in particular by Hintikka’s exceptionally well established research layout, laudable mastery of the research method, innovative approach to the topic, as well as the novel scientific contributions of her findings. The topic of the thesis is current and has interesting implications in the study of, not only cognates, but also of multilingual pedagogics. The methods chosen for the study were deemed particularly demanding, requiring thorough familiarity with topical resarch literature from the awardee. Hintikka’s findings regarding the importance of phonetic forms in the cross-linguistic word recognition process are both convincing and well-justified. In addition, the panel of judges stresses the impressive work conducted by the awardee in the gathering of a high-quality data set under challenging conditions via remote means.
In addition to the Afinlandia award presented, AFinLA also wishes to recognize the following two Master’s thesis with an honorable mention:
· Mikko Kukkonen (University of Turku): La durabilité en vogue?: La construction du discours de mode durable dans Le Monde, Le Figaro et Le Parisien.
· Matleena Tölli (University of Eastern Finland): Puhemies vai puheenjohtaja? Puheenjohtaja-nimikkeen käyttö eduskunnan puhemiehestä täysistunnoissa vuosina 2000–2019 ja kansanedustajien mielipiteet nimikkeestä.
For details, please contact:
Joonas Råman, AFinLA ry. (Afinlandia-coordinator), , tel. 0505723979 AFinLA ry. : http://www.afinla.fi/