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Abstract

This article discusses attitudes towards and perceptions of different kinds of suburban-sounding Swedish – ranging from new urban youth styles (here called suburban slang) to a more formal Swedish with a “suburban touch”, due to, in particular, phonological features indexing suburb (here called suburban Swedish). Special attention is paid to the question of how these ways of speaking are labeled, and whether they should be labeled at all. Empirical data from our previous and ongoing studies will be used to illustrate an inside as well as an outside perspective on these issues. Our data confirm that there are a number of labels for the slang language; labels employed both by language users with a suburban background (“insiders”) and by language users who are not familiar with linguistically and culturally heterogenic suburban areas (“outsiders”). This indicates that the slang language is enregistered. By contrast, there is no established label yet for the formal suburban-sounding Swedish. However, this kind of language variation is perceived, discussed and described by the insider participants in our studies. The outsider participants on the other hand do not seem to perceive these nuances within suburban-sounding Swedish. For many of them, the “suburban touch” triggers cognitive and evaluative reactions, commonly associated with the slang language. Since the slang variety is stigmatized in the majority society, such confusion may have negative consequences for young suburban residents – especially when this occurs in situations that are crucial to their opportunities for social inclusion (e.g. in institutional conversations concerning access to education, labor and housing). Thus, our stance is that we must talk about risks of exclusion, and that the strategic distinction between slang and “suburban touch” can be helpful in arguing for the acknowledgment of suburban Swedish as simply one of many ways to speak a more formal Swedish with some kind of sociodialectal sound.