Swedish is a pluricentric language and has official status in both Sweden and Finland. Until recently, most studies on such languages have focused on differences and similarities in grammar and lexicon, but less on pragmatic variation. We suggest that a pragmatic perspective aids in understanding the relationship between national varieties, and in this study, we investigate greetings in Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish. Previous comparisons of the two varieties suggest that Sweden Swedish is less formal than Finland Swedish, and in this article we problematize the concept of formality, and discuss whether formality may explain any differences in the use of greetings.

We use three datasets from Finland and Sweden respectively: video recorded service encounters from box offices and information desks, recorded focus groups as well as experiments. Combined, the data suggest that the Finland Swedish greeting repertoire is larger than the Sweden Swedish one, and that Finland Swedes therefore are more sensitive to social distance than Sweden Swedes. At the same time, the study highlights the complexity in the use of greetings, and that variables such as gender, age, context and level of acquaintance all play an important part in the use of greetings in both Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish.