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 both series. Numerous thesis of outstanding quality were nominated from multiple areas of applied linguistics and numerous Finnish universities. The awardees were announced at the AFinLA autumn symposium dinner on 15 November, 2019.
This year the awardees are:
Doctoral dissertation series:
Maiju Strömmer (University of Jyväskylä) for her doctoral dissertation titled A nexus analysis of Finnish language learning in cleaning work.
In the justifications for the award, the selection committee noted the following: ”The topic of the dissertation, affordances for learning Finnish in the context of cleaning work, is tremendously important in the way it contributes to the wider societal discourse on immigrants’ language learning and employment. The dissertation deserves credit for employing multiple methods and for its exceptional scope of data. The knowledge provided by this dissertation can be used in multiple contexts from teaching Finnish as a foreign language to language training in the work life.”
Master’s thesis series:
Hoa Nguyen (University of Jyväskylä) for her Master’s thesis titled Language shaming practices on YouTube: the ideologies of English in Vietnam.
In their justifications, the selection committee appreciated the contribution the thesis makes to examining language use on social media. The thesis was seen as timely and innovative not only for the way it describes young people’s digital day-to-day life, but also for the way it delves into language attitudes and beliefs.
The abstracts for the theses can be found at http://www.afinla.fi/en/afinlandia-awards.
In addition to the two Afinlandia awards presented, AFinLA also wishes to recognize the following two Master’s thesis with an honorable mention:
· Maija Korhonen (University of Helsinki): Moniäänistävää ja uudelleen muotoilevaa puhetta rodusta ja sukupuolesta
· Tuomas Hartikainen (University of Jyväskylä): Processing of English Articles and the Idiom Principle: A Re-examination of the Phraseological Perspective
For details, please contact:
Lotta Lehti, AFinLA ry. (Afinlandia coordinator), , tel. 0400 661268
AFinLA ry.: http://www.afinla.fi/
Hoa Nguyen, hoa.dieu.ng@gmail.com