WP123 Further notes on sociolinguistic scales

This short paper reflects on the notion of sociolinguistic scales, drawing on Westinen?s doctoral research on ?Authenticity in Finnish hip hop?.? The lyrics of three rap artists ? Cheek, Pyhimys, and Stepa ? are examined, and this shows how all of them invoke a kind of ?ideological topography? of Finland, involving a complex set of meaningful semiotic distinctions between centers and peripheries, locality and translocality, all operating within one ?benchmark? scale: Finland.? The study yields fundamental insights into what scales can mean as an element in the theoretical toolkit of a sociolinguistics of globalization.