Authors

• Pitkänen, Ville (e2)
• Think Tank e2

Keywords

bilingualism, culture, minority language users, minority languages

Abstract

The survey studied the attitudes of Finnish speakers towards Swedish language and the Finns whose mother tongue is Swedish. Both Finnish and Swedish are official languages in Finland, but Swedish is the minority language. The survey was funded by Svenska Folkskolans Vänner (SFV).

The respondents were asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements relating to, for example, Swedish language, usefulness of bilingualism, need for politicians and authorities to master both languages, learning Swedish at school, bilingual schools, discrimination, the minority culture, access to own-language services, costs of bilingual services, relations between the speakers of the two languages, attitudes towards Swedish-speaking Finns and changes over time in the attitudes, usefulness of being able to speak Swedish, and the status of Swedish language in legislation.

Background variables included, among others, gender, age, NUTS2 and NUTS3 regions of residence, occupation/status in employment, household composition, household income, language spoken at home and political party preference.