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 the Master’s thesis and Doctoral dissertation series. Several thesis of outstanding quality were nominated from multiple areas of applied linguistics and numerous Finnish universities. The awardees were announced on 28.10, during the conference dinner organized in conjunction with the AFinLA -symposium.
This year, the awardees are:
in the Master’s thesis series:
Laura Castañe Bassa (University of Jyväskylä) for her thesis titled Perspectives on Translanguaging and Schoolscape : A Case Study of Romani-Speaking Children in a Hungarian School
The awarded thesis examines university students’, teachers’ and researchers’ perspectives on the implementation of translanguaging practices in a Hungarian school where a majority of the students speak Romani at home. Another goal of the study was to find out how the linguistic landscape of the school changes with the implementation of these practices. The setting is local, but the findings are easy to interpret, as the author herself successfully does, from a global perspective. The award committee was particularly impressed by the exceptionally neutral, non-judgmental and scientifically professional approach to a politically sensitive research topic. The thesis is societally relevant, the research setup is ambitious, and the author has paid particular attention to research ethical considerations.
In the Doctoral dissertation series:
Laura Hekanaho (University of Helsinki) for her dissertation titled Generic and Nonbinary Pronouns : Usage, Acceptability and Attitudes
The disseratation examines English third person singular pronouns, as well as the changes in their use and attitudes related to them. The award committee was impressed by the multidisciplinary approach combining gender studies and sociolinguistics, and the exceptionally well implemented research method which combined qualitative and quantitative methods. Personal pronouns often carry with them a great deal of attitudes and assumptions related to gender identities. As Hekanaho’s dissertation so well demonstrates, examination of them often reveals a great deal about how humans think of themselves and of others. The results of the study carry very practical implications in both the fields of language teaching and codifying, as well as language-political decision making.
In addition to the Afinlandia awards presented, AFinLA also wishes to recognize the following four theses with honorable mentions:
· Noora Jormakka (University of Tampere) for her Master’s thesis: Konekääntämisen kompetenssit kouluissa. Tarkastelussa kieltenopettajien käänninlukutaito
· Anni Reilä (University of Turku) for her Master’s thesis: Saat itse määritellä, millainen olet. Selkokielisen seksivalistuksen retoriikka
· Pauliina Peltonen (University of Turku) for her Doctoral dissertation: Individual and Interactional Speech Fluency in L2 English from a Problem-solving Perspective: A Mixed-Methods Approach
· Mary Nurminen (University of Tampere) for her Doctoral dissertation: Investigating the Influence of Context in the Use and Reception of Raw Machine Translation
For details, please contact:
Joonas Råman, AFinLA ry. (Afinlandia-coordinator), , tel. 0505723979
AFinLA ry. : https://afinla.fi