Research at the School of Languages and Translation Studies

The Centre for Language Learning Research (Leala) conducts multidisciplinary research, utilises a broad range of data sets and applies various research methods. The research conducted at Leala focuses on second/foreign language learning in particular. Researchers at the Centre come from different departments at the School of Languages and Translation Studies (English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Scandinavian languages and Spanish). Our research also belongs to the University of Turku’s thematic research profile “Children, young people and learning”.

Contact: Ilmari Ivaska
Leala: https://sites.utu.fi/kielen-oppimisen-tutkimuskeskus/en/

The Centre for the Study of Language and Wellbeing LaWe aims to support, advance and promote research that focuses on the interconnection between wellbeing and language. In addition, the Centre intends to enhance the application of this kind of research in ways that serve and improve our societies. We approach wellbeing in a broad sense; in our view, the relevance of language and interaction for wellbeing can be witnessed for example in the role that language and interaction plays in identity formation, health, schooling, culture and diversity, social relationships, social participation, access to goods, resources and power, and the relationship between a society and its environment. The Centre is multidisciplinary and has an open policy regarding its databases and methods.

Contact person: Jenny Paananen

> Read more about LaWe

The Digin research network promotes research on different aspects of digitality as well as in the digital humanities. The network is multidisciplinary and brings together researchers from such areas as language studies, history, media studies, social sciences, computer science and law. We explore digitality and its aspects from various perspectives. For instance, interaction, communication, media and culture in a digital context all feature characteristics that make them different from their non-digital counterparts. In particular, digitality has affected how research materials and data are conceived in the humanities and social sciences. These new kinds of datasets offer novel opportunities while also presenting challenges, as their analysis requires new methods and tools.

Contact person: Veronika Laippala

The research network brings together researchers and teachers working on multilingualism and language contacts. The network includes both individual researchers and various research groups, such as the Linguistic Landscape research group, the Code-Switching group and the Multilingual Turku network. The Language & Contact network provides a research community for people working at different departments within the School and a forum for its members to present ongoing research and plan future research projects.

The research topics of the network include

• multilingualism, multiculturalism and migration
• language choice and use by individuals and in communities and institutions
• minority languages in contact situations
• language contacts and conflicts past and present
• contact-induced variation and change, including lexical borrowing and code-switching
• linguistic landscapes and namescapes, language ideologies and attitudes
• languages spoken in the Turku region at different times and in different contexts
  
  Contact persons: Hanna Lantto and Janne Skaffari

The Research Unit for Volgaic Languages operates under  the department of Finnish Language and Finno-Ugric Languages  at the University of Turku. The research unit was initially established as a temporary project in 1993 and it became a permanent institution in 2000.

Contact person: Jussi Ylikoski

> Read more

Translation Studies Research Network of the University of Turku (TYKÄT) is a community of translation researchers that specializes in professional translating, translation technology, and literary translation as well as their intersections, such as professionalization in translation and the relationship between technology and literary translation throughout history. Our research concerns not only translation history and contemporary translation, but also the future of translation which we aim to influence through our research in collaboration with translator training and translation practitioners.

To know who we are, we need to know where we came from. As modern phenomena such as fan translation or rapid technological advancements intersect with past translation practices, knowledge of the history of translation is a base for understanding translation of today. Long-standing research topics also include the societal and cultural role of translation, financial aspects of translation services and literary translation, and professionalism in translation. The research network is a cofounder of the national translator training history project and participates actively in it. The history of translator training has been studied by collecting documents, texts, and pictures, and by interviewing former teachers and students.

Our main research topics are:

• translated fiction and nonfiction
• translation history
• translation technology
• translator training
• textual genealogy and interconnections
• translation in audiovisual and digital environments

Director and contact person: Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov

Working group: Tiina Holopainen, Outi Paloposki, Leena Salmi, Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov and Tiina Tuominen

The TurkuNLP Group is a group of researchers at the University of Turku as well as the UTU graduate school (UTUGS). The main focus of our research are various aspects of natural language processing / language technology and digital linguistics, ranging from corpus annotation and analysis to machine learning theory and applications. The main application areas we've been focusing on is the domain of biological, biomedical, and clinical text, as well as methods and resources for syntactic and semantic analysis of Finnish and the modeling of web-based language use based on registers or genres.

See more: turkunlp.org/

Contact: Veronika Laippala

In the project we study the relationship between language, culture and communication. How similar are the communicative patterns found in the two national languages of Finland, Finnish and Swedish, compared to communicative patterns found in Sweden? To what extent can the communicative patterns found be related to cultural preferences in Finland?

The project is a continuation of the research program Interaction and Variation in Pluricentric Languages – Communicative Patterns in Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish (Riksbankens jubileumsfond 2013–2020). The theoretical framework is Interactional Linguistics, where communicative strategies utilised by individual speakers are related to larger social and cultural contexts. We focus on communication in two types of institutional settings: service encounters at box offices and supervision meetings with students at the university level.

Project leader: Professor Camilla Wide

Researchers: PhD Eveliina Tolvanen, PhD Anu Rouhikoski, Associate Professor Tommi Kurki

Funding: The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, 2023–2026

> Read more about the project on its website

This project investigates the use of graphic devices (such as tables and diagrams) in early modern English printed books in order to shed light on the development of vernacular graphic literacies and early strategies of data visualisation. We will 1) map the distribution of different types of graphic devices in different kinds of books and develop a new framework for their classification; 2) determine how target audience and topic influence the use of graphic devices; and 3) establish how linguistic information and graphic devices work together in the context of the page and the whole book, for example through captions and reader instruction. Our findings will reveal what kinds of graphic literacies were associated with graphic devices and how these literacies developed in 1473–1800 – a period characterized by a rapid increase in literacy and a diversification of readers. Our results also contribute to the history of graphic representation of information in books targeted at vernacular readers and elucidate the role of graphic devices in the transmission of knowledge.

Project leader: Matti Peikola

Funding: Academy of Finland 2021–25

More information: project website

Ethical and sustainable language teaching, funded by the Kone Foundation, is a four-year project launched in the School of Languages and Translation Studies at the University of Turku, Finland in January 2021. The cornerstone of the project lies in the question of how the principles of ethics and sustainability can be promoted in language teaching and pre-service teacher education.

Taking into account the aspects of sustainable development and language equality is challenging not only in language teaching but also in pre-service language teacher education. The purpose of the project is to research the essence of ethics and sustainable development principles and how they can be promoted in language teaching and pre-service language teacher education. Based on this research, we will develop engaging learning activities for language learners and pedagogic solutions for pre-service teachers and teachers, which promote ethical conduct, sustainable development and language equality.

Project director: Minna Maijala, minna.maijala(at)utu.fi

EKKO Team: Leena Maria Heikkola, Salla-Riikka Kuusalu, Päivi Laine, Maarit Mutta, Katja Mäntylä, Judi Rose, and Veijo Vaakanainen

More information: https://sites.utu.fi/ekko/en/

Project funding: Kone Foundation 2021–2025

FiRe = Finnish Relations: Changes in Finnish relational predicates from the 16th century to the present

We analyze the development of central relational predicates (verbs, cases, and adpositions) from early literary Finnish (16th century) to the present. While earlier studies have focused on relational predicates at a certain subperiod of Old Finnish, no studies have tracked their actual development over time. Our approach is based on frameworks of usage-based linguistics, most notably cognitive grammar, cognitive semantics, and functional–typological syntax. The project incorporates morphological, syntactic, and semantic approaches to relational predicates. As our data, we will use existing corpora in which the historical layers of literary Finnish are well documented. The project is divided into four work packages: 1) the realization of transitivity, 2) the grammaticalization of modal verbs and non-finite constructions, 3) the evolution of adverbials, and 4) constructions of reported discourse, verbs of communication, cognition and emotion.

The project is funded by the Academy of Finland (2022—2026).
For more information: Tuomas Huumo.

From Forest Words into Forest Action (SeedLING) is a four-year research project funded by Kone Foundation and launched at the School of Languages and Translation Studies at the University of Turku in January 2024. The study of the discourses of Finnish forest actors and the search for alternative discourse models is the cornerstone of the project. 

The purpose of the project is to explore forest-related discourses and their impact in Finland from an eco-philosophical perspective, utilising linguistic research methods and an interdisciplinary approach. Through experimental research, we examine how the discourses of forestry stakeholders influence the opinions of Finnish people. In addition, we seek alternative discourses that support a more sustainability-oriented and eco-philosophically pluralistic way of thinking about forests. 

The project is part of Kone Foundation's Metsän puolella -initiative.  

Principal Investigator: Minna Maijala

SeedLING Team: Salla-Riikka Kuusalu, Veronika Laippala, Attila Krizsán, Assi-Jutta Kuusela, Telma Peura, Arran Stibbe

More information: https://sites.utu.fi/seedling/

Project funding: Kone Foundation 2024–2027 

In this research project, we examine the language ideologies of generation Z born in the early 2000s. We analyze student essays (N = 27141) written in the Finnish matriculation examination in spring 2022, in which students about to finish upper secondary school reflect on the topic of Finnish and other languages, multilingualism and language learning. We approach the student essays as textual performances that reflect societal values, globalized language ideologies and established language hierarchies, through the theoretical framework of Language Making. The results of this project will provide useful information for language educators and for future language policy makers."

Please read more: https://sites.utu.fi/kiera/

Project leader:  Hanna Lantto

Project funding: Emil Aaltonen Foundation, 2023—2026

Implementation of sustainable development goals in language teaching and learning (SustainLANG) is a four-year project, funded by the Research Council of Finland and was launched in late 2024 at the School of Languages and Translation Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. At the core of this project of this project lies the potential of language teaching and learning as a means of implementing education for sustainable development (ESD).

The SustainLANG-project aims to

• study the integration of sustainable development goals (SDGs) into language teaching and learning at different educational levels in Finland
•  examine the practical implementation of ESD in language classrooms and teaching materials
• map the extent of ESD and language teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards it using a large-scale questionnaire
• develop an innovative theory- and practice-driven ESD implementation model for language teaching and learning

This project will provide new insights into the current state of and possibilities for ESD in language education in Finland, which can be adapted internationally. The aim is to promote change in language education theory and practices.

Project director: Minna Maijala

SustainLANG-team: Salla-Riikka Kuusalu, Päivi Laine, Pekka Lintunen, Eva Malessa, Maarit Mutta, Loretta Saikkonen

More information: https://sites.utu.fi/sustainlang/

Project funding: Research Council of Finland 2024–2028

The project L2 Interactional Fluency across Contexts (ILFACT) examines second language (L2) interactional fluency. Previous fluency research has mostly focused on examining individual speakers' fluency, and fluency research based on interactional and multimodal analyses is rare. In the project, both interactional fluency features and interactional fluency assessments are examined. Interactional data will be collected from university students of English in Finland and Germany in their L2 English and in their first language (Finnish or German). The data set is analyzed with a multimodal, mixed-methods approach using quantitative and qualitative methods. The project benefits L2 learning, teaching, and language assessment by providing information about the nature of L2 interactional fluency and the factors impacting it.

Principal investigator: Academy Research Fellow Pauliina Peltonen 

More information available on the project's website: https://sites.utu.fi/flowlang/projects/ilfact

Project funding: Research Council of Finland 2024–2028

This project combines the long traditions of corpus linguistics and the latest innovations of natural language processing (NLP) to explore web registers—situationally defined Internet text varieties such as news, blogs or how-to pages—on a massively multilingual scale. Specifically, the project

1. analyzes language-specific differences of registers and creates a data-driven description of the full range of web registers in six languages,
2. develops machine learning methods for large-scale register modeling and identification in massively cross/multi-lingual settings, and
3. automatically identifies registers in Universal Parsebanks, a language resource spanning 100 billion words and 64 languages.

Thereby, the project provides critical knowledge about online communication and tools with which to develop web data from simple masses of raw text toward organized resources with rich metadata.

Researcher: Veronika Laippala

Funding: Academy of Finland 2020—2024

KISUVI research, funded by Kone Foundation, is a four-year project launched in the School of Languages and Translation Studies at the University of Turku, Finland in January 2022. The project focuses on the study of writing fluency in first and foreign languages, in particular on the use of formulaic sequences.

This mixed-method project uses the graph theory-based keystroke logging software GGXLog, whose visualisation functions provide a new approach to the analysis of writing processes. It also allows a more precise definition of formulaic sequences in languages belonging to different typological families. The results of the project will contribute to the knowledge on the development and fluency of multilingual writers. The results will help educators and policy makers to design and develop teacher training and modern digital learning materials.

Project director: Maarit Mutta, maarit.mutta(at)utu.fi

KISUVI Team: Sinikka Lahtinen, Päivi Laine, Sanni Linnasaari, Mari Mäkilä, Katja Mäntylä, Antti Suomela, Outi Toropainen, Anne-Maj Åberg

Project funding: Kone Foundation 2022—2026

Narrative Text, Translator and Machine: In Search of User-Friendly Translation Technology for Literary Texts is a multidisciplinary research project combining translation studies, literary studies, and language and translation technology funded by the Academy of Finland. The project aims to increase knowledge on phenomena that are closely linked to literary texts, translating them, and utilizing translation technology in literary translation.

The project studies narrativity and its modelling, literary characteristics and problems in their translation, the working methods and technological needs of literary translators, and ethical challenges such as copyright issues and sustainable development that are connected with using translation technology in literary translation.

The project also aims to apply the accumulated data in practice. We will develop a prototype for a translation technology application that helps human translators with professionally translating literary texts from English into Finnish. During the later stages of the project, the prototype is further developed with a usability study.

Project funding: Academy of Finland 2022–
The project started on 1 Sept 2022.

The project’s principal investigator is professor Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov.

For more information see https://sites.utu.fi/littra/en/

RefGram (Reflective grammar knowledge on Swedish language islands in Finland), funded by Svenska Kulturfonden (The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland), is a two-year project launched in the School of Language and Translation Studies, University of Turku, in September 2023. The project focuses on language learners' metalinguistic skills in Finnish and Swedish. 

The recorded data, comprising learner conversations and responses regarding Finnish and Swedish language structures, serves to deepen the understanding of metalinguistic knowledge. Participants in this project are fluent in both languages, with Swedish as the medium of instruction and Finnish prevailing in the surrounding environment of the language island. The outcomes will enrich our understanding of learning two typologically different languages and inform future grammar teaching practices.

Project director: Outi Toropainen (outi.toropainen@utu.fi)

RefGram Team: Sinikka Lahtinen and Outi Toropainen

Project funding: The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland 2023–2025

> Read more about the project on its web page

The project focuses on Skolt Saami, a severely endangered language spoken by 300–350 speakers. 

The main objectives are to
1) describe the grammatical structure of the present-day Skolt Saami,
2) provide an overview of its historical development, and
3) of the sociolinguistic variation. 

These objectives will be realized in the form of
1) a comprehensive descriptive reference grammar, accompanied by
2) in-depth case studies,
3) an edited volume of articles on the language,
4) two collections of oral texts, and
5) a doctoral thesis.
All of the concrete objectives have a higher aim of supporting the Skolt Saami in their efforts to revitalize their language and culture. 

The research team consists of five experts on the Saami languages who have studied and taught Skolt Saami for a long time, and want to provide a better description of the language that will be easy for the Saami themselves to use. The project will incorporate Skolt Saami speakers and students as equal research partners.

The project is led by Jussi Ylikoski, Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages at the School of Languages and Translation.

Project funding: Academy of Finland 2022–2026

The project team consists of four specialists in Skolt Saami:
Ph.D., Adjunct Professor (Title of Docent) Eino Koponen 9/2022–8/2026
Ph.D., Adjunct Professor (Title of Docent) Taarna Valtonen 9/2022–8/2026
MA Markus Juutinen 1/2023–8/2026
MA Miika Lehtinen 7/2023–8/2026

The project started in September 2022. More information on the project’s website https://sites.utu.fi/koltansaame/en/.

This project studies how telepresence robots can be used to support participation in classroom education at a distance. Telepresence robots are remote-controlled moveable devices with videoconferencing capabilities. The project analyses video-recorded language lessons from higher education classrooms in which one or more distance students participate alongside face-to-face students by operating a telepresence robot remotely. The analysis employs multimodal conversation analytic methodology and focuses on how the ability for remote movement is used as a resource for interaction and participation. The results can help establish a clearer picture of the possibilities of telepresence technologies in supporting participation across distance and in increasing equality of access to education for vulnerable groups such as homebound or hospitalized students.
 
Researcher: Teppo Jakonen
Funding: Academy of Finland 2021—2026

Translation as a journalistic tool post doc research project investigates the usage of foreign language sources in media.

Foreign language sources are central in news production: they help journalists gain wider knowledge about a particular event and build trust with the audience. Furthermore, reliability and plurality of sources are a guarantee of quality and freedom of the press. Financial constraints have led media companies to cut the number of foreign correspondents and to rely more and more on news agencies’ services and major international news media when reporting on foreign countries. This material is mainly in English, and journalists have to rely solely on it when they don’t speak the language of the reported foreign country. Such reliance on secondary source material can compromise the diversity of voices and perspectives in the media.

This research aims to shed light on the use of foreign language source texts, their status and their impact on the news process. It examines how the participation of journalists, through their location and language skills, affects the sources used and the subjects addressed through them in the news.

The empirical material of the study consists of the media coverage of two non-English speaking, historically related foreign countries: France and Mali by two of the largest media outlets in Finland. Very recently, Finnish journalists themselves have raised concerns about the narrowing range of their language expertise, which has led, in their opinion, to an overrepresentation of Finnish and English sources in the Finnish media. The reliance on one specific language and a larger use of this kind of secondary source material might limit the diversity of perspectives in the media landscape. Thus, the project aims to explore whether the possible reliance on secondary English-language source material affects the Finnish media. For example, could limitation of multiplicity and diversity of sources be a threat to social cohesion and democracy?

Translation as a journalistic tool is a post doc project conducted in two universities: the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Tartu. It is funded by:

• ASLA-Fulbright Research Grants for Junior Scholars from the Finnish Fulbright Foundation co-shared with the University of Turku for post-doctoral research at the University of California Berkeley, USA, 1.9.2023–31.5.2025
• The Finnish Cultural Foundation through The Finnish Foundations’ Post Doc Pool for post-doctoral research at University of Tartu, Estonia, 1.2.–31.5.2025
   

Project Leader: Léa Huotari

• The Circulation, Transformation, and Reception of Johann Georg Zimmermann’s Von dem Nationalstolze, 1758-1805 (Academy of Finland 2021–2024)
• CORDIALIS (Connecting remote areas through digital competences and cultural heritage) (ERASMUS+, 2022—2024)
• REMODUS – The (Re-)Making of a Discipline: Digital Transformation and Internationalisation in and Beyond Uralic Studies (Erasmus+, 2021—2024)
• Romancing the Caribbean: Sea, Sex, and Sustainability in Caribbean Literature and Culture (Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, 2022—2024)
• Fluency and Disfluency Features in L2 Speech (FDF2) (Academy of Finland, 2020—2024)
• Municipality slogans from the viewpoint of linguistics and marketing (Foundation for Municipal Development, 2020–) https://sites.utu.fi/kuntasloganit/fi/
• Invisible forces: communication with the supernatural in Swedish- and Finnish-language folk traditions from Finland’s bilingual coastal areas (The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland 2019–2022)
• Fluency across multilingual speakers (MultiFluency) (The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland 2020-2023)
• Circular Economy Catalysts: From Innovation to Business Ecosystems (CICAT2025) (Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland, 2019–2023). https://cicat2025.turkuamk.fi/en/
• A sharp crystallization or a flat triviality? Municipality slogans from the viewpoint of linguistics and marketing (Foundation for Municipal Development, 2020–2022), https://sites.utu.fi/kuntasloganit/fi/
• URKO – Uralic Triangulation (the DIGIHUM programme of the Academy of Finland, 2020 to 2022)
• Digilang (University of Turku, 2018–2021)
• A piece of news, an opinion or something else? Different texts and their automatic detection from the multilingual Internet (Emil Aaltonen Foundation, 2019-2021)
• Formulaic sequences and metalinguistic knowledge in second and foreign language learning (The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, 2017–2021)
• Community of Practice in Uralic Studies (Erasmus+, 2018–2021)
• Multilingualism in the Long Twelfth Century
• LALI (Language and literacy learning through art) (2017–2020)
• Interaction and Variation in Pluricentric Languages (IVIP) (Riksbankens jubileumsfond, 2013–2020)
• Construal of Means and Time (COMET) (2015–2020)
• Arkisyn: A Morphosyntactically Annotated Corpus of Everyday Finnish-language Conversations (2013–2019)
• Academic Finnish as a Challenge for a Non-native Learner (2015–2018)
• The unexplored contexts of language contact: translation and interpretation (2015–2018)
• Social media from Nordic to global contexts (SoNoGlo) (2016–2018)
• INFUSE – Integration Finno-Ugric Studies in Europe, partnership established by eight European universities (Erasmus+, 2016–2018)
• Targeted Teaching for Advanced Finnish Learners (Kone Foundation, 2016–2018)
• Finnish Internet Parsebank  (2013–2017)
• Units of grammar and interaction (Academy of Finland, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 2014–2017)
• Out of the Ordinary: Challenging Commonplace Concepts in Anglophone Literature (The Research Council of Finland, 2014–2017)
• Online Udmurt–Finnish–Udmurt dictionary (Kone Foundation, 2015–2016)
• The Regional and Social Variation in Finnish Prosody project (Kone Foundation, 2013–2015)
• Subject expression in Finnish and other Finnic Languages (Academy of Finland, 2011–2014)
• TIME: Translation Research Training. An Integrated and Intersectoral Model for Europe (European Commission, 2011–2014)
• OPTIMALE: Optimising Professional Translator Training in a Multilingual Europe (European Commission, 2011–2013)
• Linguistic Variation in the Province of Satakunta in the 21st Century (Satakunta Regional Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, 2007–2013)
• Language learning and social media: 6 key languages (European Commission, 2010–2012)
• Westh Codex (Finnish Cultural Foundation, 2010–2012)
• Subtitles and language learning, Lifelong Learning programme (European Commission, 2009–2012)
• Silence as Voice: Reempowering the disempowered in contemporary English literatures (Academy of Finland, 2008–2011)
• På väg mot kommunikativ kompetens: tillägnandet av svenskans struktur hos finska inlärare (Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2007–2010)