Why should a language scholar from Finland care about decolonization? “All I wanna do is study languages, and Finland never had any colonies. Why should I care?” I’m glad you asked. #thread #coloniality #decolonization? #language #Finland/

Let’s start with the innocent-Finland discourse. Finland has participated in and benefited from the colonial enterprise in many ways, which other scholars have said more eloquently than me (eg Keskinen et al., 2009).../

yet the notion of Finland being “different”/“innocent” (aka Finnish exceptionalism, eg Rastas, 2012) is persistent. A starting point: https://t.co/BREs8Utx5w /

Unless we understand Finland in a larger context of global systems of oppression, we are not seeing a big part of its history. Those systems of oppression do not allow for neutrality. /

Now let’s talk about language, the very notion of “a language” as a system you can clearly define, assess, compare, organize into families ... -- where does this come from? (hint: Heller & McElhinny, 2017, hint#2: colonialism, capitalism)/