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

芬兰和立陶宛语言的社会地位：不同调查方法作用的比较案例研究

• 批准号: 250534512
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Stephan Kessler
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Baltistik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2013-12-31 至 2015-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/250534512?language=en
• 关键词: social; status; languages; Finland; Lithuania

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.

该调查旨在调查芬兰和立陶宛的发言者在其相关语言（即芬兰语，瑞典语，立陶宛语，波兰语，俄语）评估的社会地位。这里特别注意的是方法上的重要问题，即调查对象对研究对象的教育知识在多大程度上影响调查结果。该调查对多语社会的社会语言学基础研究做出了重要贡献，因此与语言政策研究具有高度的相关性。每个社会内部对这些语言政治措施的社会效果的判断完全不同。然而，两国的共同点是，他们的居民对自己的语言非常敏感，并根据语言政策致力于政治正确的行为。这项范围广泛的调查旨在通过收集的统计数据的平行性对两国进行比较。芬兰经常被作为语言政策的参考国，已经对语言忠诚问题以及芬兰语和瑞典语的地位进行了研究。然而，最近在语言问题上出现的政治紧张局势与这些研究的结果相矛盾。由此看来，以前的研究似乎很难说明语言问题造成社会紧张的可能性，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峻任务。因此，我们的研究项目的方法是至关重要的。在目标国家将首次采用间接和直接相结合的方法。通过同时使用两种研究方法，我们希望获得客观的结果。到目前为止，还没有对不同社会群体的使用者在本国日常生活中使用的语言的忠诚程度进行间接调查，研究材料将通过间接匹配伪装技术和直接问卷在立陶宛和芬兰的几个城镇获得，并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。通过对两种方法的比较，可以得出被调查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的结论。在讨论语言政策时，了解这一点至关重要。由于该项目是由不在调查地区的研究所正式监督和组织的，因此对结果进行有益讨论的条件甚至会更好。