Helt olika mindsets: om språkanvändning och språkliga attityder bland flerspråkiga i Sverige

The fact that there are about 30 times as many languages as there are countries makes multilingualism a matter that concerns most societies around our world. Sweden is no exception. This bachelor thesis deals with the topic of language usage and language related attitudes amongst young, multilingual adults in Sweden. The study focuses on “heritage speakers”; people who have grown up in a society where their heritage language/their mother tongue is considered a minority language. The study seeks to answer the following questions: How do multilingual people use their mother tongue (of minority status) in everyday life? What attitudes do they have towards being multilingual? How treasured is the mother tongue? The main focal point of the questionnaire lies on reported language usage with family and other multilingual individuals, mother tongue education, and attitudes regarding multilingualism, personality and culture. This is an explorative and inductive study, whose goal is to report discuss reported usage and attitudes. The data was collected via Facebook in October 2012, from multilingual individuals. The result of the questionnaire suggests that the mother tongue appears to be used more frequently with the father than with the mother; media produced in the mother tongue is rarely utilised; the mother tongue is mainly used with the older generation; Swedish is often perceived as being the “first, or strongest, language”; being multilingual seems to bring only positive aspects to people’s lives