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

这项调查旨在调查芬兰人和立陶宛人在各自相关语言(如芬兰语、瑞典语、立陶宛语、波兰语、俄语)中的社会地位。这里特别关注的是一个方法上的重要问题，即受访者对研究对象的教育知识在多大程度上影响调查结果。这项调查对多语言社会的社会语言学基础研究做出了重要贡献，因此与语言政策的研究高度相关。每个社会内部对这些语言政治措施的社会影响的判断完全不同。然而，这两个国家的共同点是，他们的居民对自己的语言高度敏感，并根据语言政策致力于政治上正确的行为。这项范围广泛的调查旨在通过收集的统计数据的对比来比较这两个国家。芬兰经常被认为是语言政策的参考国家，关于语言忠诚度问题以及芬兰语和瑞典语地位的研究已经完成。然而，最近表现出来的关于语言问题的政治紧张局势与这些研究的结果构成了矛盾。从这一点上看，以前的研究似乎很难说明语言问题可能导致的社会紧张局势，语言问题的影响是不可否认的，有时会产生令人惊讶的后果，构成芬兰和立陶宛政治决策者的严重任务。因此，我们研究项目的方法论至关重要。将首次在目标国家采用间接方法和直接方法相结合的方法。通过同时运用两种研究方法，希望能取得客观的结果。到目前为止，还没有对不同社会群体的说话者对本国日常生活中所说语言的忠诚度进行间接调查。研究材料将在立陶宛和芬兰的几个城镇通过间接配对技术和直接问卷获得，并将根据相关的社会因素进行区分。研究地点的地理差异考虑到了语言使用的不同条件。对比这两种方法可以得出结论，受访者对语言政策问题的认识如何以及在多大程度上影响他们的回答。在讨论语言政策时，了解这一点是至关重要的。对结果进行有益讨论的条件会更好，因为该项目是由不在调查地区的机构正式监督和组织的。

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.