Attityder till flerspråkighet : - en intervjustudie av döva elever på gymnasiet

The purpose of this study is to examine bilingualism, multilingualism and language attitude of deaf students in gymnasium. The study will also investigate the similarities and differences between student’s attitudes regarding their multilingualism. The questions asked are: Do they feel bilingual or multilingual? What’s their attitude to their languages? Do they feel proud having known several languages? The methods used are qualitative interviews as data gathering method, specifically focused on phenomenology. The seven deaf individuals from gymnasium were interviewed for this study. Because the method of phenomenography was used, the focus was on the empirics rather than theories. The analysis will be mainly focused on phenomes rather than the students themselves. The main results from this study includes that the students did not pride in their bilingualism or multilingualism but instead they believed they learned because of their environment. In addition, they highlighted judgements they received for being deaf such as not believing they had the capacity of learning several languages. Deaf people are often stereotyped by hearing people as being dumb and not being able to write or read. Other areas found are communication, opportunities and code shifts are greatly of importance for their multilingualism. They find multilingualism overall positive and it may give them opportunities that other might not have. My hope is that my study can outline what are the attitudes of bilingualism, multilingualism and languages among deaf people