The social status of languages in Finland and Lithuania: A comparative case study on the role of different survey methods

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The survey aims to investigate the social status which speakers in Finland and Lithuania assess at their relevant languages (ie Finnish, Swedish resp Lithuanian, Polish, Russian). Particular attention here lies on the methodologically important question to which extent the respondents' educational knowledge about the object of research influences the results of the survey. The survey makes an important contribution to basic research of socio-linguistics about multilingual societies and therefore it is highly relevant to the study of language policy.The judgments within each society about the social effects of these language-political measures are completely different. Nevertheless, both countries have in common that their inhabitants are highly sensible of their languages and aim at a politically correct behavior according to language policy. The wide-ranging survey is meant to compare both countries by means of a parallelism of the statistical data collected. In Finland, which is often cited as a reference country concerning language policy, studies about questions of language loyalty and about the status of Finnish and Swedish have already been made. However, the political tensions concerning languages matters, which have recently manifested themselves, constitute a contradiction to the results of these studies. From this it would seem that previous research has hardly been able to illustrate the potential for social tensions resulting from language problems, the effects of which are undeniable and sometimes bear surprising consequences constituting severe tasks for political decision-makers in Finland and Lithuania. Therefore, the methodology of our research project is of vital importance. For the first time a combination of an indirect and a direct method will be applied in the target countries. By applying two research methods simultaneously we hope to achieve objective results. So far an indirect survey has not been made to examine the degree of loyalty of speakers of different social groups towards the language spoken in everyday life in their home countries.The research material will be obtained in several towns in Lithuania and Finland by means of the indirect matched-guise technique as well as by a direct questionnaire, and it will be differentiated according to the relevant social factors. The geographical variation of the locations of research draws into account the varying conditions of the usage of the languages. Contrasting both methods will make it possible to draw conclusions about how and in which degree the respondents' awareness of problems of language policy exerts an influence upon their answers. Knowledge about this point is crucial when discussing language policy. The conditions for a useful discussion about the results will even be better since the project is officially supervised and organized by institutes which are not situated in the areas under investigation.