Elizabeth Peterson

Elizabeth Peterson is a University Lecturer in the Department of Languages at the University of Helsinki.

She teaches courses on language attitudes, varieties of English, and sociolinguistics topics such as language and gender.

Contact information

PhD, University Lecturer in English

Room C626, Unioninkatu 40

PL 24, 00014 Helsingin yliopisto, Finland

Phone: +358 50 448 2246

E-mail:

Research interests

I am a sociolinguist, with my main interests in this broad area relating to language contact phenomena such as pragmatic borrowing and language attitudes. I am currently the director of the , a 3-year project funded by the Kone Foundation. I have also been a PI and project member in projects focusing on pragmatic borrowings from English into Finnish and Finland Swedish, and the Erasmus+ project . I am the author and editor of several books and articles on English and its role as a prominent language in today's world. These include Making Sense of “Bad English”: An Introduction to Language Attitudes and Ideologies (Routledge, 2019) and English in the Nordic Countries: Connections, Tensions, and Everyday Realities (2024).

Recent publications