What's in a name? Language ideology and social differentiation in a Swedish print-mediated debate

This paper investigates a recent print-mediated discussion about linguistic phenomena that are perceived by many commentators to be 'deviant' from 'standard Swedish.' The aim of the paper is to illustrate how this language debate is built on two closely entwined discursive processes: a struggle to define the name, meaning, and value of a specific linguistic phenomenon; and the indexical processes through which such a phenomenon is bound up with a multifaceted image of its purported speakers, in which gender is imbricated in age and ethnicity. Essentially, the argument is that the metalinguistic pronouncements in this debate are ultimately the outer manifestation of deeper social concerns about what it means to be a 'non-Swedish' young man.