Investigating Danish and Swedish
children’s attitudes toward each other’s
language using the matched guise
technique
Erik Vedder
3334104
Master thesis Linguistics
Supervisor: dr. H. van de Velde
1
Contents
1.
Introduction
1
2.
Language attitudes
5
2.1
Definition of attitudes
5
2.2
Practical implications
6
2.3
Children’s attitudes
8
2.4
The Matched Guise technique
10
2.5
Advantages and disadvantages of the Matched Guise technique
12
3.
4.
The problem of Scandinavian semicommunication
15
3.1
Scandinavian or Nordic?
15
3.2
Previous research
16
3.2.1 Haugen (1953)
17
3.2.2 Maurud (1976)
18
3.2.3 Börestam (1987)
20
3.2.4 Conclusions from previous research
22
3.3
Possible explanations
23
3.4
General conclusions and implications for my research
25
Formulation of the problems, goals, and hypotheses
28
2
5.
6.
7.
Method
30
5.1
Stimulus material
30
5.2
Participants
33
5.3
Procedure
34
The questionnaire
36
6.1
The issue of translating the questionnaire
36
6.2
Rating scales
37
6.2.1 Likert scales
38
6.2.2 Semantic differential scales
38
6.3
Number of steps
41
6.4
Changes made in the construction process
41
Results
7.1
7.2
44
Overt attitudes
44
7.1.1 Attitudes toward all languages
44
7.1.2 Attitudes toward Danish and Swedish
45
7.1.3 Development in attitudes
47
Covert attitudes
49
7.2.1 Covert attitudes toward all languages
49
7.2.2 Covert attitudes toward Danish and Swedish
51
7.2.3 Semantic Differential Charts for the bilingual speaker
52
7.2.4 Development in attitudes
55
3
7.2.5 Comparison of the development of overt and covert attitudes
8.
58
Conclusions
64
8.1
64
Will there be any differences in social judgments between Danish and
Swedish children?
8.2
Is a certain development in age perceptible?
64
8.3
Will there be any difference between consciously and subconsciously held
65
attitudes?
9.
8.4
Where do these differences occur among the Danish and Swedish children? 66
8.5
With regard to age, do covert attitudes develop parallel with overt attitudes? 66
Discussion
68
References
70
Appendix A: Danish version of the questionnaire
74
Appendix B: Swedish version of the questionnaire
76
Appendix C: English translation of the questionnaire
78
4
1. Introduction
‘Whether speaking one or five languages, all individuals belong to at least one speech
community, a community all of whose members share at least a single speech variety and the
norms for its appropriate use. Language variation within and between speech communities
can involve different languages or only contrasting styles of one language. In every society
the differential power of particular social groups is reflected in the language variation and in
attitudes toward those variations.’ (Ryan & Giles 1982: 1)
Almost everyone has an instant opinion about languages he or she hears, and it’s not very rare
that these opinions are based on ingrained prejudices. The first time we meet someone,
immediately we start developing certain judgments about this person, based on what we see
and hear from him. In what way we do this, and how much importance we attach to those
opinions, is defined by both consciously and subconsciously held attitudes. The perception we
get from someone, as described above, isn’t a passive process. Regardless whether we are
aware of this, we all develop certain “implicit personality theories”, which allow us to
develop opinions about people, based on the information we have about them. One of the first
things that comes into play, besides appearance, facial expression and body language, is a
person’s speech style (Giles & Powesland 1975: 1).
Some languages (like Italian) are popularly considered to be ‘musical’, others (say German)
to be ‘harsh’ or even ‘guttural’, etc. Similarly, an old cliché in the Nordic countries says
Danish ‘isn’t a language, but a throat disease’. Interestingly enough, Dutch and
Schweizerdeutsch (Swiss German) are judged in the same way by people in their respective
neighboring countries. The question is what to think of these types of qualifications; what are
these characteristics based upon? It is clear that qualifications like ‘musical’, ‘harsh’ or even
‘throat disease’ must have something to do with the sound of the language in case. The most
salient phonetic features of a language are usually the ones one neither recognizes from their
mother tongue, nor from any other language one already speaks. These especially striking
features, then, are interpreted in such a way that they become the base for attitudes toward the
entire language. All three of the above examples of judgments seem to be based on phonetic
features of the languages in case. If this were to be the only base for language attitudes, it is
clear that one might set up some kind of abstract beauty scale for all languages considered
purely as sound and ask musicians, poets, or art critics to judge them. This is not the case,
5
though. Researchers have come up with several hypotheses regarding the nature of language
attitudes, the most important of which are summed up by Van Bezooijen (1994: 253).
To account for the consistently favorable judgment of the standard variety, Giles et al. (1975),
concentrating on the phonological level, suggested two possible explanations, referred to as
the ‘inherent value’ and ‘imposed norm’ hypotheses. The former claims that some linguistic
varieties, based on their linguistic (i.e. particularly phonetic/phonological) features, are
intrinsically more pleasant to listen to than others, regardless of its similarity to the standard
variety. As a matter of fact, because of the positive attitudes toward these varieties, they
become accepted as the standard for that particular language. The fact that, in order for this
hypothesis to be true, it is not necessary that the language varieties in case are actually
recognized makes it perfectly suitable for cross-cultural research. That way it could be
determined whether people would be able to differentiate between standard and non-standard
varieties of an unfamiliar language. In 1974, Giles, Bourhis, Trudgill and Lewis asked
listeners from England to judge several (both standard and non-standard) varieties of Greek,
and in 1975, Giles, Bourhis en Davies did the same for varieties of French among listeners
from Wales. In both cases, systematical differences in attitudes were not found, which was
interpreted as evidence against the inherent value hypothesis.
The imposed norm hypothesis works exactly the other way around: it suggests that the
standard variety has gained acceptance as the most pleasing language variety simply as a
result of cultural norms. Because of social pressures upon people to emulate the standard, it
has come to be regarded as the superior form on many dimensions, including the aesthetic. In
this hypothesis, linguistic features play a role to the extent of their subjectively evaluated
distance toward the standard variety, so it is not necessary for the non-standard variety to be
recognized.
Trudgill and Giles (1978) extended the imposed norm hypothesis to include a variety of other
social factors in addition to the standard related norms imposed by cultural pressure. This socalled ‘social connotations’ hypothesis would, for example, explain why in an intra-cultural
setting listeners do not make a simple distinction between standard and non-standard varieties,
but make finer distinctions along a continuum. If the attitudes towards the social connotations
(that is, generalized ideas about the speakers of a certain variety, as well as geographical,
cultural, and economical aspects of the region where this variety is spoken) are positive, then
the attitudes towards the variety itself are positive as well. Of course, these social
6
connotations only function if listeners are able to correctly identify the varieties judged. In
this hypothesis, linguistic features would not play a role.
Although we may take it for granted that a simple judgment of beauty contains a strong
component of intrinsic sound-based attitudes, other elements, like the image on has from the
speakers of a language, their culture or geographical distribution, may play a role as well. If
one for example thinks of Spanish people as being high-spirited, it could be the case that they
would describe the Spanish language in a similar way. It is reasonably clear, however, that
such clichés are heavily biased by particular historical circumstances and accomplishments. In
other words, social and national attitudes can change over time without any corresponding
change in the languages themselves (and have done so demonstrably).
It’s these, far from easy to explain, language attitudes that are the subject of my thesis. More
specifically, I’m interested in what Danish and Swedish children’s attitudes toward each
other’s languages are. These two languages share a long common heritage, and are today still
mutually comprehensible. Or at least in theory they are, for it has consistently been shown
that the mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish is asymmetrical; it is far more
difficult for Swedes to understand spoken Danish, than it is for Danes to understand spoken
Swedish. This asymmetry has been found in several studies (Maurud 1976, Bø 1978, Delsing
& Lundin Åkesson 2005). In a recent study, however, Schüppert & Gooskens (2009) showed
that this asymmetry is not found among pre-schoolers. In a follow-up research, Schüppert
investigated the attitudes that pre-schoolers and young adults have towards the other
language, and the role these attitudes play for the participants’ word recognition abilities.
Schüppert did not find any significant differences in attitude between the Danish and the
Swedish group of pre-schoolers. However, she found significant differences among the adults.
This finding suggests that an asymmetrical development takes place, i.e. that Danish children
develop a different attitude towards the Swedish language, than the other way around. The
oldest pre-schooler in Schüppert’s research was 6.7 years old, the youngest adult 18.0. This
means that there is a large gap in her data, which makes it hard to pinpoint the exact age
period when attitudinal change takes place. Her data indicate, however, that this change must
take place between the age of 7 and 18. Another restriction of this study by Schüppert was the
fact that it exclusively focused on consciously held attitudes towards a language. She suggests
that future research could focus more in-depth on both consciously and subconsciously held
7
attitudes. This being taken in consideration, my study aims at investigating when exactly
changes in attitude among Danes and Swedes towards each other’s language take place.
In the next chapter, I will go more deeply into the theory and practice of language attitudes
and past research within this field. Also I will examine the method I have chosen to conduct
my research with, give examples of earlier applications of this method, and discuss some
advantages and disadvantages in using this specific technique. In order to be able to do this,
though, one has to have a broader knowledge of the term ‘language attitude’, its social
meaning and implications for everyday life, so I’ll come to that first. In the third chapter I will
describe the exact method of my research, of which I will present the results in the fourth
chapter. The fifth and last chapter will contain conclusions drawn on the base of the results, as
well as an evaluation of the method being used and a discussion on ways of improvement and
suggestions for further research.
8
2. Language attitudes
In this chapter, I will explain the difference between consciously and unconsciously held
language attitudes, and in what way they surface. I will go into earlier research within the
field of language attitudes, with special focus on the matched guise technique. I will explain
the set-up of such research, illustrated by its first application in 1960 by Lambert in Quebec,
and another one in 1973 by Giles in Wales. Also I will come to different arguments for and
against this type of research, as well as the technical difficulties one encounters performing
this type of attitude measuring.
2.1 Definition of attitudes
Although numerous theoretical and operational definitions of ‘attitude’ have been employed
in the past, Allport’s (1954) conceptualization tends to encompass most of the agreed upon
meaning (Ryan & Giles 1982: 132; Gardner 1985: 8; Baker 1992: 11). He states: ‘An attitude
is a mental and neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or
dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is
related’ (Allport 1954: 45). The important aspect of this definition in the present context is
that attitudes influence individuals’ responses to attitude objects or situations, not that they
determine them. This is an important distinction. If this is recognized, we should not expect
much of a higher relationship. To do so would be to deny the actual nature of the attitude
concept (Ryan & Giles 1982: 132).
Although a number of researchers would limit the term to an evaluative or affective response,
another common concept of attitudes includes two additional components: belief (cognitive
basis for the evaluation) and behavior (observable reflection of the evaluation). So attitudes
are said to have cognitive, affective, and behavioral components (see Baker 1992: 12f.). The
cognitive component concerns thoughts and beliefs and refers to the individual’s belief
structure, whereas the affective component concerns emotional reactions towards the attitude
object. This feeling may concern love or hate of the language, or an anxiety about learning a
minority language. Finally, the behavioral component concerns a readiness for action; it refers
to the tendency to behave toward the attitude object. It is behavioral intention or plan of action
under defined contexts and circumstances.
9
When social scientists attempt to measure an attitude, however, they typically infer it on the
basis of individuals´ reactions to evaluatively-worded belief statements1. The relationship
between attitudes and action is neither straightforward nor simple, since the cognitive and
effective components of attitude may not always be in harmony (Baker 1992: 13). Irrational
prejudices, deep-seated anxieties and fears may occasionally be at variance with formally
stated beliefs. In attitude measurement, formal statements are made reflecting the cognitive
component of attitudes. These may only reflect surface evaluations. Doubt has to be expressed
whether deep-seated, private feelings, especially when incongruent with preferred public
statements, are truly elicited in attitude measurement. Such measurement may not always
delve beneath the surface. Overtly stated attitudes may hide covert beliefs. Defense
mechanisms and social desirability response sets tend to come in between stated and more
secret attitudes. The third component is not specifically included in this definition since
whether or not attitudes have behavioral implications does not seem relevant to the definition
of the concept.
Consequently, from an operational point of view, ‘an individual’s attitude is an evaluative
reaction to some referent or attitude object, inferred on the basis of the individual’s beliefs or
opinions about the referent’ (Gardner 1985: 8). Some authors have argued that the concept of
attitude is of limited value since individual differences in attitudes do not always correlate that
highly with actual behavior, but, like Gardner states, ‘on the other hand they do not state that
it does not correlate with behavior either. The accumulated evidence in the area of second
language acquisition indicates that attitudes are related to behavior, though not necessarily
directly’ (Gardner 1985: 8). This brings us to practical implications of language attitudes in
everyday life.
2.2 Practical implications
As I discussed in the previous chapter, people usually have clear ideas about which language
varieties they like or dislike. Investigating evaluative reactions towards language varieties can
be important for several reasons. Firstly, language attitudes can have consequences for the
ethnic or social groups that use these specific varieties. Secondly, language attitudes can be of
1
Although the procedures differ somewhat, this is the essential nature of all major attitude assessment
techniques procedures, some of which I’ll go more deeply into later.
10
importance for the motivation to learn a certain language variety, since learners with a
negative attitude will usually be less motivated to learn or understand another language.
Finally, language attitudes may be important in language revitalization and revival, as well as
in language decay and death. For even if children’s teachers’ unfavorable attitudes towards
nonstandard dialects are only subconscious, they can lead to unwitting discrimination in favor
of children with middle-class accents and dialects. Just as in the case of language death, so
irrational, unfavorable attitudes towards vernacular, nonstandard varieties can even lead to
dialect death (Trudgill 2000: 195). Attitudes toward bilingual education, language laws, or
immigrant languages may well affect the success of language-policy implementation.
A survey of attitudes provides an indicator of current community thoughts and beliefs,
preferences and desires. Attitude surveys provide social indicators of changing beliefs and the
chances of success in policy implementation (Baker 2006: 210). In minimizing the negative
effects of negative language attitudes, it is therefore necessary to have a good understanding
of the nature of the attitude, but also what it’s based upon. As Lewis (1981) observed:
‘Any policy for language, especially in the system of education, has to take account of the
attitude of those likely to be affected. In the long run, no policy will succeed which does not
do one of three things: conform to the expressed attitudes of those involved; persuade those
who express negative attitudes about the rightness of the policy; or seek to remove the causes
of the disagreement. In any case knowledge about attitudes is fundamental to the formulation
of the policy as well as to success in its implementation.’ (Lewis 1981: 262).
The specific attitudes under investigation may include those toward language groups; toward
a language itself; toward its features, uses, or cultural associations; toward learning a
language; toward bilingual education as product or process; toward language provision;
toward language policy; or toward language practices.
One of the first researchers within the field of social judgments, which also contains language
attitudes, was Robert Gardner. The foundations of Gardner’s theory were laid down in the
1960s and were grounded in social psychology. Within language attitudinal research, social
psychology is mainly concentrated on language as part of social behavior. By emphasizing the
socio-cultural dimension of language attitudes, Gardner’s (1985) approach offered a macro
perspective that allowed researchers to characterize and compare the motivational pattern of
whole learning communities and then to draw inferences about intercultural communication
and affiliation. The macro level (the relationship between social/ethnic groups within a
11
(language) community) is often the starting point for research on which social psychologists
base their assumptions about the way members of a certain members of these groups use their
language on a micro level (social interaction).
The most developed and researched facet of Gardner’s (1985) motivation theory has been the
integrative aspect. In broad terms, an “integrative” motivational orientation concerns a
positive interpersonal/affective disposition toward the out-group and the desire to interact
with and even become similar to valued members of that community. It implies an openness
to, and respect for, other cultural groups and ways of life. Thus, a core aspect of the
integrative disposition is some sort of a psychological and emotional identification (Dörnyei
2003: 4f.).
2.3 Children’s attitudes
In Ryan and Giles (1982), Richard Day discusses the important development issue of how
children come to share the attitudes toward language variation of their parents. Language
attitudes are viewed as an integral component of children’s developing communicative
competence. That is, they form part of the social knowledge required for producing and
interpreting messages appropriately within one’s environment. The first issue Say addresses
concerns the age at which children initially become aware of language and dialect differences
and their evaluative connotations. Research with preschoolers shows that the contrast between
two dialects of the language is recognized by children as young as age four, and children
between the ages of four and six years have been shown to differentiate between contrasting
speech varieties with social evaluations that look much like those of the adults in their speech
communities. Moreover, Day discusses the similarity between the racial/ethnic attitudes and
children's language attitudes are discussed, ‘because it is these that are conceptually more
similar to many of the [other] attitudes that have been shown to relate to proficiency in a
second language.’ (Day 1982: 116f.).
He concludes by arguing that children’s attitudes toward the relevant language varieties
within their speech community cannot be assessed accurately without going beyond the
school setting, where the influence of the standard language and culture is at its strongest.
Since every speech community values its native language/dialect at least for some purposes,
12
investigations should be mounted to identify the positive features associated with that variety
and to determine when children first come to appreciate them (Day 1982: 128f.).
Parents are not the only source of attitudes toward ethnic groups, but they are a primary one
particularly at the younger ages. Lambert and Klineberg (1967) found that, whereas six-yearolds identify their parents as their major source of knowledge about ethnic differences, the
older children de-emphasized the role of the parent and instead focused attention on movies,
television, books and school. Nonetheless, parents undoubtedly play a role later on, if only
because they lay the foundation for subsequent learning. Ehrlich (1973) indicates four ways in
which parents influence development of their children; he suggests that (1) parents
communicate their attitudes directly (i.e., direct tuition); that (2) they control their children’s
opportunities for interethnic contact and experience; that (3) they employ child-rearing
practices which can influence children’s inter-group attitudes; and that (4) they establish a life
style which influences their children’s reactions to other people and groups. This is not meant
to imply that children simply reflect the attitudes of their parents. The process is much more
complicated than that, as indicated by many studies (some of which Day (1982) examines
thoroughly).
Gardner et al. (1970) concluded, ‘One implication of this pattern is that children adopt
generalized authoritarian attitudes similar to those of their parents relatively quickly, but that
it takes more time to acquire their attitudes toward specific groups.’ (Gardner et al. 1970:
327). Lambert (1974) argues that an important aspect of the socialization process, which
parents actively contribute to, is the development of in-group identity, which is fostered by
delimiting the belief about that group, and this is clearly supported by these findings.
In a recent study however, Birgitte Vittrup and Rebecca Bigler (of the Children’s Research
Lab at the University of Texas) and Phyllis Katz (professor at the University of Colorado)
showed that children as young as six months start judging others based on skin color. It is
their belief, that ‘kids are developmentally prone to in-group favoritism; they're going to form
these preferences on their own. Children naturally try to categorize everything, and the
attribute they rely on is that which is the most clearly visible.’2 Although it remains uncertain
what to think of these new findings just yet, the connection between racial/ethnic attitudes and
2
Newsweek
reported
on
these
findings
in
an
article,
which
can
be
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/09/04/see-baby-discriminate.html
13
read
here:
language attitudes was widely acknowledged before (Day 1982; Gardner 1985). It is therefore
not at all unthinkable that, as Vittrup argues, ‘many modern strategies for nurturing children
are backfiring—because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Small corrections in
our thinking today could alter the character of society long term, one future citizen at a time.’
2.4 The Matched Guise Technique
As discussed in the previous paragraphs, spoken language is an identifying feature of
members of a national or cultural group and any listener’s attitude toward members of a
particular group should generalize to the language they use. From this viewpoint, evaluational
reactions to a spoken language should be similar to those prompted by interaction with
individuals who are perceived as members of the group that uses it, but because the use of the
language is one aspect of behavior common to a variety of individuals, hearing the language
is likely to arouse mainly generalized characteristics of the group (Gardner & Lambert 1972:
293). According to Giles and Powesland (1975), speaker evaluation studies form the
foundation of the social psychological perspective on language attitudes. The matched guise
technique is an indirect way of studying speaker evaluations, inferring language attitudes from
evaluations of two or more language varieties uttered by the same speaker, especially in terms
of status, prestige, and social preferences (Baker 2006: 214). It gets at the more private
attitudes and mental images people have of foreign ethnolinguistic groups.3
In the matched guise procedure, subjects are being told that they will be listening to passages
which are recorded by different speakers, based on which the subject give their opinion of
these speakers on a number of personality features. The interesting point about these
experiments is that two of the speakers in fact are, unbeknown to the subjects, the same
speaker – but the same speaker using two different guises (i.e. two different languages or
dialects). This way, the only possible difference between the two recordings would be due to
the use of these different guises; all other features of the speaker are maintained unchanged.
Thus, subjects are asked to rate bilinguals speaking in their two languages (though they are
not aware of this), and the reactions to the two different guises are contrasted.
3
Labov has called this kind of ‘prestige’ of nonstandard linguistic varieties covert prestige because attitudes of
this type are not usually overtly expressed, and depart markedly from the mainstream societal values (of schools
and other institutions) of which everyone is consciously aware (Trudgill 2000: 74).
14
If, therefore, speaker 2 and speaker 5 are the same person, and yet speaker 2 is evaluated as
being more intelligent than speaker 5, then this difference must be due to de different form of
language he or she was using. These “different” speakers are considered representatives of the
community where this language or dialect is typically spoken. Any prejudicial judgments
about this ethnic group or community are then reflected through the way the speaker sounds.
These judgments are then considered to represent reactions to the given language varieties,
since potentially confounding elements are constant across guises.
The matched guise technique was initially used by Lambert et al. (1960), who were interested
in attitudes toward English and French in the mainly France-speaking province of Quebec,
Canada, where English was being used for formal purposes, and French in informal situations.
Lambert et al.’s goal was to investigate the way in which speakers of French and English
would judge each other’s personality features. In order to do this, he developed the matched
guise technique. Two groups of students, French-Canadian (FC) and English-Canadian (EC),
were asked to evaluate the personality characteristics, four in each language. They were not
made aware of the fact that the recordings were actually made by just four speakers, perfect
bilinguals, who were each recorded twice, both in French and in English. This way the
evolutional reactions to the two language guises could be matched for each speaker. These
eight recordings were then judged by the subjects on several personality features.
The matched guise technique thus stems from a very simple notion: hearing the flow of a
foreign language evokes in the mind of the listener certain attitudinal reactions that have
become associated with the particular foreign people who habitually use that language. The
association may have been established through direct experience with members of the group
or indirectly through attitudes picked up from important people in one’s social environment
who in turn may have had little or no direct experience with the group in question. If we were
to ask listeners to give spontaneously their evaluations of the person whose voice is being
heard, we would likely capture their attitudinal reactions associated with those people who
characteristically use that language, even if they have no prior experience with members of
the group in question. This is specifically likely if, unbeknown to the listeners, they also gave
their reactions to the very same speaker who on another occasion presented the identical
message in another language variety. Thus, if we could compare the reactions to the matched
guises of bilingual speakers, we would have a fairly good view of both the overt, but
especially the covert attitudes involved (Gardner & Lambert 1972: 98). Lambert even thinks
15
that using the matched guise technique reveals more about the attitudes of the subjects toward
the out-group, than direct questions about attitudes could have done (Lambert 1960).
2.4.1 Advantages and disadvantages of the Matched Guise technique
The matched guise techniques main advantage is, therefore, the way in which it eliminates
idiosyncratic variances in speech. Consequently, any differences in the way the subjects judge
the “different” speakers can’t be due to any specific features one speaker has (since there is in
fact just one speaker), but are purely based on the language the speaker uses. Since these
speakers are considered representatives of a certain (ethnic) group, any difference in the way
subjects judge the same speaker at two different occasions, can be attributed to the way these
subjects judge the out-group as a whole (Giles & Powesland 1975: 7).
The assumption that the matched guide technique is suitable for measuring language attitudes
has been criticized by socio-psychologists, though. According to Triandis, language attitudes
are ideas about language and language behavior that are mainly based on emotion, which can
lead to an actual language behavior concerning social classes. This definition of attitudes
exists of three components, as discussed in paragraph 2.1: a cognitive component (the idea),
one evaluative or affective component (emotion), and one behavioral (or readiness-for-action)
component.
The cognitive component exists of an individual’s beliefs, that is, all the knowledge one has
about a person, product or social situation. The fact that members of a language community
are able to identify certain linguistic features as being part of a certain language variety, that
they are able to connect this variety to the geographical region where it is spoken, as well as
the social or ethnic group that uses is and the purposes for which it is suited, is an example of
the beliefs about the social object of ‘language’. All of these processes can therefore be
considered part of the cognitive component of language attitudes. These ideas about language
are not isolated incidents, though; they are connected with emotions. The fact that a certain
social or ethnic group uses a certain language variety, in itself causes evaluative judgments
about this variety that are based on the emotions one has considering this group. This is the
affective component. The third component is the most problematic one, because it has to do
with an individual’s behavioral intentions; that is, the way one would want to behave. The
actual behavior is also influenced by the subjects’ normative beliefs, that is, the way one
16
thinks he or she should behave. That means that there can be a difference between the
behavioral component of a person’s attitude and the social norms of the society he or she lives
in. One’s language attitude doesn’t therefore necessarily predict one’s language behavior, nor
does it so the other way around. Therefore, Triandus thinks the matched guide method isn’t a
good way of measuring language attitudes, since only the cognitive and affective components
are being measured, and the behavioral is being left out.
Another problem with measuring language attitudes is being pointed out by Baker (1992:
18f.): ‘The measurement of an individual’s attitudes is unlikely to reveal their attitudes
perfectly. There are a number of reasons why attitude measurement is rarely, if ever, totally
valid (…).’ He lists three of the, in his opinion, more prominent problems:
(1)
People may respond to an attitude test in a way that makes them appear more
prestigious and better than in reality. Consciously and unconsciously people tend to
give socially desirable answers, and put themselves in the best light (halo effect).
(2)
People may be affected in their response to an attitude test by the researcher and the
perceived purpose of the research. The ethnic identity, gender, status, age, language in
its verbal and non-verbal forms, and the social class of the researcher may each affect
how an individual responds to an attitude test. The perceived aim and object of the
research may similarly affect replies4.
(3)
A good attitude test needs to encompass the full range of issues and ideas involved in a
topic. The initial item pool must cover the fullest range of possible attitudes in terms
of topic, complexity and favorability and unfavorability. An item analysis on the
item pool (to exclude the more unreliable items) must be executed on a representative
and not atypical sample of people.
As Ryan and Giles state though, ‘while the matched-guise technique has been criticized,
mainly for its alleged artificiality (…), it does seem to provide useful information which can
be confirmed by other means. In general, the matched-guise technique provides to the
listeners samples of speech which are thought to act as identifiers, allowing the expression of
social stereotypes. That is, it is not the speech per se which is evaluated, but rather the
4
This means that in the case of my research, it is actually an advantage that the researcher comes from another
country than those involved.
17
speaker. Most studies of language attitudes, in fact, would be more accurately termed studies
of attitudes towards speakers of language varieties.’ (Ryan & Giles 1982: 22)
In this paragraph, an introduction to an instrument for measuring language attitudes has been
given: the matched guise technique. The way in which research that uses this method is
conducted has been explained, and some aspects of the practical/technical side of the method
have been discussed. In explaining the matched guise technique, one major point that has to
be considered when conducting such research already has been shown: it is absolutely
necessary for the nature of the recorded passages that they are as neutral as is possible, since
any attitudes toward the content of the recordings can influence the way the subjects judge the
speakers. If the matched guises were to differ in any form or shape (besides of course the
language), it is virtually impossible to know whether any differences in judgments by the
subjects are due to actual differences caused by the use of another language, or because there
were differences in other conditions than language only.
With this matched guise technique, and all the advantages and disadvantages I have gone into,
I have conducted my research, which I will describe in the following chapters.
18
3. The problem of Scandinavian semicommunication
In order to understand the current language situation in Scandinavia, it is important to know
what is meant with Scandinavia. The terms ‘Scandinavian’ and ‘Nordic’ and their equivalents
have often been used ambiguously and inconsistently. In the next paragraph, I will go deeper
into these two terms, using a differentiated approach. Also I will motivate my use of the term
‘Scandinavian’ with regard to my thesis. After that, I will go into previous research within the
field of Scandinavian semicommunication, and I will amplify the conclusions that are based
upon prior research, the development these conclusions have undergone, as well as possible
explanations that have been given for this.
3.1 Scandinavian or Nordic?
The noun ‘Scandinavia’ is nowadays used in three different senses:
(1) Sweden and Norway; i.e. just the Scandinavian Peninsula. This meaning is used primarily
in a geological and geographical sense.
(2) Sweden, Norway and Denmark, who share a long common cultural and linguistic history.
This meaning has become internationally well established in the last hundred years.
(3) Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and, at times, even Greenland and
Finland. This third meaning is problematic since it is used, mostly outside the region
concerned, as a synonym of ‘the Nordic countries’.
Although there is some disagreement on the meaning of ‘Scandinavia’, all Scandinavians
agree that their own term, Norden, includes the five sovereign states of Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. They have a common cultural heritage which unites them to
some extent and distinguishes them from other nations but does not make them identical. It
also includes three largely autonomous territories: Greenland and the Faroe Islands (both
under Danish sovereignty) and the Åland Islands (under Finnish sovereignty). Norden
signifies above all an economic, social and cultural unity. It does not signify a linguistic unity,
since Finnish, Sámi (spoken in northern Norway, Sweden and Finland) and Greenlandic are
not directly related to the Scandinavian, i.e. North-Germanic, languages.
19
Scandinavia, by contrast, signifies not only the unity just referred to, but in the case of four of
the five countries also a linguistic unity. From the linguistic point of view, we may speak of
Scandinavia in a narrow sense – Denmark, Norway, and Sweden – and in a wide sense,
including what may be called Insular Scandinavia: Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Despite
being Indo-European languages, like the other Scandinavian languages descended from the
Germanic branch, Icelandic and Faroese do not qualify as Scandinavian in a narrow sense,
because it is not mutually comprehensible with the rest of its kinsmen (Törnqvist 1997: 3).
Norden then possesses eight official languages. These are: Swedish, Norwegian, Danish,
Icelandic, Faroese, Finnish, Sámi, and Greenlandic. Of these eight languages, only the first
five are linguistically Scandinavian. In spite of a common linguistic heritage, each language
has its own history and its own more or less independent standards. For reasons of
convenience I will only use the term Scandinavia and its equivalents in my thesis, since (a) I
will always be referring to linguistic relationships rather than geological and geographical
ones; and (b) the three languages I am most interested in (i.e. Danish, Norwegian, and
Swedish) are all part of what is widely agreed upon as being Scandinavia in even its
narrowest sense, both geographically and linguistically for that matter.
3.2 Previous research
Several studies have been conducted before, in order to map inter-Scandinavian
communication. In this paragraph, I will go into the ways the ability to understand each
other’s language in Scandinavia has been tested before, and to what conclusions these tests
have led over time. This is meant both to give an idea of previous research and results, and the
conclusions based upon this. Not only will it give more insight in the way these conclusions
have developed, it will also serve as the base for the hypotheses for my own research. The
previous research I will be discussing in this paragraph, concentrates on the primary
Scandinavian language community, i.e. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The researches I
have chosen to go into are Haugen’s (1953) test on to what extend Scandinavians themselves
thought they were able to understand each other’s languages, Maurud’s (1976) general
comprehension test among soldiers and Börestam’s (1987) research of understanding two
different kind of spoken Danish among Swedes.
20
3.2.1 Haugen (1953)
The first one to do research on to what extent Danes, Norwegians and Swedes understand
each other’s languages, and where problems might occur in this process, was Einar Haugen
(1953). He asked ca. 900, mostly highly educated respondents about how well they had
understood the other languages, the first time they had met someone from the other countries.
Subjects had to choose on a scale with ‘not at all’ on the one end, and ‘understood everything’
in the other. The results are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Percentages for inter-Scandinavian understanding according to Scandinavians
Negative answers
Positive answers
(answer a, b & c)
(answers d & e)
Danish in Norway
56%
42%
Swedish in Norway
18%
76%
Norwegian in Denmark
21%
72%
Swedish in Denmark
71%
18%
Norwegian in Sweden
9%
87%
Danish in Sweden
70%
23%
The three most negative answers (a), (b) and (c) were mostly given by the respondents
regarding the relationship between Danish and Swedish (each about 70%), as well as by
Norwegian respondents regarding the understanding of Danish (56%). The Norwegians were
more positive (answers (d) and (e)) about their understanding of Swedish, as well as the
Danes were about their understanding of Norwegian (both over 70%). The Swedes were even
more enthusiastic about their understanding of Norwegian; 87% claimed to have understood
(almost) everything.
Besides the extent to which Scandinavians think they understand their neighboring languages,
Haugen was also interested in the attitudes held toward them. Again here, Danish is the
underdog in Scandinavian linguistic opinion. Only 2% of the Norwegian respondents, and not
a single Swedish one, preferred Danish to their own language, while 41% of the Danish
respondents preferred Norwegian and 42% preferred Swedish to their own language. Only a
21
modest 29% of them claimed to prefer their own language to Swedish, and only 18% per cent
preferred it to Norwegian.
A weakness in Haugen’s research is the fact that the informants were culled from the
membership lists of the Nordic Society (Foreningen Norden), supplemented with persons
selected from the telephone registry. Since it is reasonable to believe that anyone who is a
member of an organization like Nordic Society would be particularly interested in Nordic
cooperation and (language) contact, this has probably yielded unrealistically high figures.
Even though this would not have direct consequences for the internal proportions (since this
bias will probably be equal for all three languages), it does implicate that, in the 1950s,
mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish would even have been lower had it been
measured on a broader base. Even based on these numbers, though, already in 1953 it could
be established that the main problem within Scandinavian semicommunication lies in
conversations between Danes and Swedes, whereas Norwegians and Swedes hardly have any
problems understanding each other whatsoever. These results were the basis for all
speculations on the matter until the 1970s.
3.2.2 Maurud (1976)
The first one to do research on actual mutual comprehensibility in the Scandinavian countries
(rather than self-proclaimed comprehensibility) was the Norwegian Maurud. By doing so, he
wanted to get a deeper understanding about the relations between the different countries, and
at the same time see if Haugen’s (1953) results of how good Scandinavians think they are at
understanding each other’s languages, came across in reality. His hypotheses were that
Norwegians would come out best, and that Norwegian would be best understood, and that the
opposite would be true for Danes and Danish (Maurud 1976: 52f.).
His subjects were 504 soldiers that lived in the respective capitals of the three countries, Oslo
(Norway), Copenhagen (Denmark), and Stockholm (Sweden). The stimulus material in
Maurud’s research were a word test, as well as a series of short texts, about which the
respondents had to answer a series of multiple choice questions. Both tests were conducted
both in written and spoken versions, with separate groups of respondents. Maurud also let
certain groups hear and read their own language, as an indication for the validity of the test in
the sense that they must be assumed to get a high average score. It can be assumed that the
22
test would be valid, i.e. to measure language comprehension and not for instance intelligence,
if these groups have almost complete comprehension and the groups with neighbor language
have significantly lower scores. As it turned out, all these groups had high medians and there
were small differences between them (Maurud 1976: 58).
The main results from Maurud’s research were that Norwegians in fact were best at
understanding the other languages, as was expected. Swedish turned out to be best understood
by people from the neighboring countries, whereas Maurud had predicted that this would be
the case for Norwegian. The most striking result, though, were the general differences
between Swedes and Norwegians. The number of correct answers of Swedes regarding
spoken Norwegian was 40% lower than the other way around. Moreover, the Swedes
answered just 23% of the questions on Danish correctly. These findings suggest that an
unproblematic way of communicating with fellow-Scandinavians in his own language, hardly
exists for a Swede. In general, the subjects scored better on the reading than on the listening
test, but here too, the main problem seemed to lie within the Danish-Swedish communication.
The main critique towards Maurud’s research was his choice for the respective capitals of the
three countries. As Vikør (1993: 124) pointed out, Stockholm lies much farther away from the
other two countries than the other capitals. He thinks one could fairly assume, that people
from Stockholm are therefore a lot less likely to have had contact with the neighboring
languages, than people from Oslo and Copenhagen are. I am not quite sure whether I
personally agree with this, though. I think (particularly international) language contact is
greatest in countries respective capitals, regardless of the distance to the neighboring country.
This being said, I think Maurud gives a good insight in the situation, both on some of the
problem areas within inter-Scandinavian communication, and ways to test them. The results
were more or less the same as those of Haugen (1953), who also concluded that Norwegians
were best at understanding their neighboring languages, and that the main problem area was
that of Danish-Swedish communication, especially from the Swedish perspective. According
to Maurud, his results ‘seem to indicate, however, that these problems are not insurmountable,
that the languages are so much alike that there is no need for very much practice before
comprehension reaches a satisfactory level. The Norwegians’ good understanding of spoken
Swedish supports this assumption. On the other hand the Swedes’ low understanding of the
neighbor languages is a sign that the habit of hearing them and the attitude towards the need
23
for understanding them are of major importance for the Scandinavians’ ability to
communicate with each other in their respective languages’ (Maurud 1976: 71).
3.2.3 Börestam (1987)
The main assumption on which Börestam’s (1987) research is based, has to do with the large
phonological development the Danish language had undergone in the decades after Maurud’s
(1976) research. The fact that the pronunciation has very much diverged from the written
language, could be a major problem for the maintenance of inter-Scandinavian
semicommunication (Börestam 1987: 2). As Maurud had shown, spoken Danish was the main
problem area here, especially for Swedes. Börestam assumed that “older” Danish, which is
closer to the written language, would provide less problems for Swedes trying to understand
Danish, than “modern” Danish would. Börestam conducted her research in high schools in
three different Swedish cities, spread over the country, in order to check for possible regional
differences. The cities in case were Kramfors in the northern part of Sweden, Växjö in the
south (i.e. closer to Denmark), and Norrtälje somewhat in between. It was Börestam’s
hypothesis, that the “older” Danish would be best understood, and that Växjö would be the
city to score best.
The respondents listened to a text, which was recorded in two different versions. One
recording was made in “older” Danish, one in “modern” Danish. This difference was realized
by using a transcription of the original text, from 1942, and making a renewed version of it.
This newer version, then, was a lot less similar to written Danish than the older version was.
The respondents were given a sheet with the Danish transcription of the text, but with a few
words missing. Their task was to fill in the words they heard. Also they had to answer a few
questions regarding the text. This was done to get an insight in the general understanding of
the text, in addition to the lexical test. The results are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Percentages for test results on “older” and “newer” Danish by Börestam (1987)
Word test
Total
Växjö
Norrtälje
Kramfors
“Older” Danish
62%
62%
60%
65%
Modern Danish
48%
42%
56%
44%
24
Questions
Total
Växjö
Norrtälje
Kramfors
“Older” Danish
54%
61%
52%
47%
Modern Danish
28%
39%
19%
21%
Börestam’s hypothesis about what would be the easiest to understand version of Danish was
confirmed by the results of the test. Both parts of the test suggest that the “older” version of
Danish was easier to understand than the modern version was. Her hypothesis that the
subjects in Växjö would score best, did not quite hold up though, since the results are not
significantly better than those in Kramfors and Norrtälje. One possible explanation for this is,
although Växjö lies relatively close to Denmark (about 200 km), this distance still is too big to
be able to speak of real language contact. If one were to go further southward, to the province
Skåne (a region that used to be Danish, and still has many Danish features in its dialect), a
clearer result would be possible.
A key factor for the fact that the “older” Danish was better understood than the modern day
version is probably the difference in development of written and spoken Danish respectively,
since the spoken language variety that was closest to the written language, was easier to
understand. These findings suggest that the foundation for using one’s own language when
communicating with one another in Scandinavia, could very well be minimizing if this
development, i.e. spoken Danish moving further away from the written standard, were to
continue (Börestam 1987: 60). Börestam points out, though, that the children participating
generally had positive attitudes toward (maintaining) such an intra-Scandinavian language
community. If these latent positive attitudes are true, she says, there is still hope for young
people to have the motivation to overcome the relatively small communicational problems
(Börestam 1987: 60f.).
Börestam’s results suggest that unacquainted persons from Denmark and Sweden in face-toface encounters treat communication as problematic but possible. Where necessary they
simplify and based on their knowledge of the neighboring language they try to forestall any
expected misunderstanding. The necessity of doing so has apparently diminished over the
years and will probably continue to do so with increased sustained contact. In other words, the
Nordic languages are indeed so closely related that mutual comprehension is possible,
although it requires the full attention and a considerable measure of effort at cooperating to
succeed in pulling it off.
25
3.2.4 Conclusions from previous research
There have been numerous investigations of the Scandinavian speech community, three of
which I have gone into in the previous paragraphs chapter. Summarizing the available
research, we have found that (1) Swedes have more difficulty in understanding Danish than
vice versa, (2) the difficulty varies with the mode, spoken Danish being more difficult than
written Danish, and (3) the difficulty depends on (possibilities of) contact, since this generates
a greater receptive knowledge of, as well as familiarity with the neighboring language.
Whether this has much to do with geographical distances remains uncertain, though; on the
one hand I think language contact is greatest in a country’s capital (regardless of the distance
to the neighboring country), on the other hand, if one in fact could speak of a intraScandinavian linguistic community, there could be made a case for the fact that dialectical
distances will be a lot smaller in border regions than anywhere else. Sadly though, Börestam’s
attempt to account for such a relationship between geographical distance toward the
neighboring country and the extent to which people understand the neighboring language was
unsuccessful.
All of the investigations that I have gone into have concluded that within the Scandinavian
speech community, mostly Danes and Swedes have notable difficulties in understanding each
other. What is most striking about the Danish understanding of Swedish and the other way
around, is that this comprehensibility has proven to be asymmetrical, i.e. it is easier for Danes
to understand spoken Swedish, than it is for Swedes to understand spoken Danish.
Norwegians do not have too much difficulties understanding both Danish and Swedish – but
Swedes just do not seem to understand Danish.
In his book Den sproglige dagsorden (“Everyday linguistics”), the well-known Danish
linguist Jørn Lund tells an anecdote in which this result is confirmed. His son, who at the time
studied at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, wrote to him one day:
‘In an e-mail he described the Scandinavian situation as follows: Norwegian and Danish
students speak their mother tongue among themselves, so do Swedish and Norwegian
students, but the Danish and Swedish ones speak English’ (Lund 2003: 77). This is both good
and bad news, Lund says. He thinks it is good that all the major researches about interScandinavian communication are confirmed in reality. On the other hand it is also sad that
Swedish and Danish students cannot talk in their mother tongue when communicating.
26
As we have seen, Norwegians either have problems understanding their neighboring
languages, nor being understood by their neighbors, whereas the problems are bigger among
Danes and Swedes. More specifically, Swedes have difficulties understanding spoken Danish.
In the past, many explanations have been given for this discrepancy, some of which I will go
into in the next paragraph.
3.3 Possible explanations
Many linguists interested in inter-Scandinavian communication concentrated on the linguistic
differences between the three most prominent languages in the region, i.e. Danish,
Norwegian, and Swedish. These differences can be subdivided into three different categories:
grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. The number of grammatical differences is very
small, and can hardly be a big problem in communication between Scandinavians. Danish and
Norwegian have a large part of their vocabulary in common, but differ sharply in
pronunciation; Norwegian and Swedish have a similar pronunciation, but differ greatly in
vocabulary; Danish and Swedish have to contend with both problems.
Besides the fact that Norwegian is similar to both the other languages, they have two other
main advantages when it comes to understanding their neighbors: (a) during the course of
history, Norway has been occupied by both countries. In fact, the country has not been
autonomous since the beginning of last century. This means that both the neighboring
languages have played a major role in Norwegian society, which means that Norwegians are a
lot more used to those varieties than Danes and Swedes are to the Norwegian language.
Another clear advantage, is the major linguistic variety within Norway itself. Norwegian is a
language with two different writing standards (Bokmål (Book language), which is strikingly
similar to Danish, and Nynorsk (New Norwegian), which is based on rural dialects), without
any real standard pronunciation, and a lot of morphological, syntactical and lexical variation.
This leads to the fact, that Norwegians generally are very well trained at understanding
different language varieties.
Although the above mentioned arguments do give a fairly good explanation of why
Norwegians are good at understanding their neighboring languages, it does not say why
Danes and Swedes are not. Danish sociolinguist Frans Gregersen thinks this lack of
understanding is a result of the development of separate (and much more centralized) welfare
27
states, which mainly took place in the first half of the 20th century. This centralization meant
that Stockholm became the new centre of power in Sweden, whereas Copenhagen used to
play a much bigger role before, especially in the south of Sweden (which for a long time
actually used to belong to Denmark). That way, the Sound became a dividing rather than a
connecting sea. Stockholm lies rather far away from Denmark, whereas Copenhagen lies
reasonably close to Sweden. (Gregersen 2004: 32).
According to Gregersen (2004: 34), the Swedish lack of flexibility could also be caused by
the long period in which it was the Scandinavian ‘big brother’, who did not have to put much
effort in understanding the ‘little brother’, but on the contrary expected the little brother to put
effort into understanding Swedish, rather than the other way around.
This does not explain the asymmetry that comes forward in all researches, though. To be able
to explain this, Gregersen points at internal linguistic developments, more specifically, the
major changes the Danish language has undergone since the 1950s, which have lead to a (still
increasing) distance between the spoken and the written language. A series of relatively
recently developed features makes it harder for Norwegians and Swedes to identify Danish
words. Since both Danes and Sweden usually get to know each other’s language via writing
(namely in school), spoken Danish should be much harder to understand (Gregersen 2004:
33). This assumption is supported by findings by Maurud (1976) and Börestam (1987), as we
have seen in the previous paragraph. Haugen (1953: 286) even goes as far as saying that ‘in
general one can say that Norwegian pronunciation agrees with Danish spelling better does
Danish pronunciation.’
Despite the (phonological) developments of the Danish language, it is generally believed that
the asymmetry that comes forward in all the researches cannot be explained by linguistic
factors alone; extralinguistic factors, first and foremost the attitude toward the neighboring
language, must play a major role in this as well (Zeevaert 2004: 97). There are in fact
indications of Swedish negative attitudes toward Danish, as research by Teleman (1977) and
Lundin/Christensen (2001) have shown. The latter shows that 48% of the Danish respondents
thought Swedish was a beautiful language, whereas only 31% of the Swedish respondents
thought the same about Danish.
Already in 1953, Haugen pointed out that not only the differences between the three
languages are responsible for the asymmetry, but the attitudes toward the neighboring
languages as well (and maybe even more so): ‘Even though mutual comprehension is
28
basically a matter of language distance, we cannot entirely discount the effect of mutual social
attitudes in reducing or enhancing the will to understand. We have already noted a certain
skewness in the relationship of Danes to Norwegians, the former being more willing to
understand the latter than vice versa’ (Haugen 1953: 290).
Haugen notices the role that pronunciation plays in the negative attitudes toward the Danish
language: ‘The phonetic basis for these judgments is quite clear (…). Considered together
with the growth of nationalism in these countries, these factors decreased willingness to make
the effort of understanding Danish’ (Haugen 1953: 290). He even goes as far as saying that
‘phonetic developments which have created a cleft between Danish and its Nordic neighbors
not only constitutes bases for incomprehension, but also for irritation and general distaste for
Danish on the part of the other countries’ (Haugen 1953: 295).
3.4 General conclusions and implications for my research
The title of this chapter refers to Haugen (1953), who was the first one to use the term
semicommunication, which is still widely used today (see Zeevaert 2004, among others).
Haugen states: ‘Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes expect to be understood by fellow
Scandinavians when they use their own languages. At times, however, they are disappointed
in their expectations; and the region as a whole offers many examples of what we may call
semicommunication, the trickle of messages through a rather high level of code noise’
(Haugen 1953: 280).
According to the principle of semicommunication, everyone in Scandinavia should be able to
communicate in their own language when speaking to someone from the neighboring country.
On the one hand, a certain form of code-overlap has to be the case. Such a code-overlap only
exists between two very closely related languages. On the other hand, there must be a
common interest in using one’s own language, instead of a third one (i.e. a lingua franca, in
this case unquestionably being English). In other words, one has to be willing to really make
an effort to understand the neighboring language. This factor is very subjective, and requires a
positive attitude toward the other variety.
Braunmüller (1991: 246) names several conditions have to be fulfilled for this kind of
semicommunication to be possible, the most important one being the willingness to want to
understand the slightly different language varieties, which must be present among all
29
participators. This requires both the willingness to develop a passive competence in the other
language, and a high degree of linguistic tolerance. One might even say, that a positive
attitude toward the neighboring languages is a condition that has to be fulfilled in order to
overcome any form of grammatical difficulties that occur when facing them. This is probably
also true the other way around; if there is not talk of a positive attitude, linguistic relations and
grammatical resemblance alone will not do the trick. According to Braunmüller, the efforts of
language institutions, whose goal it is to prevent the languages in case to move further away
from each other linguistically, are of much lesser importance, since these institutions hardly
have any influence on the mentality of the speakers of the languages, who really decide about
the future of the everyday communication in Scandinavia (Braunmüller 1991: 247). This
seems to be confirmed in reality, since despite the fact that the respective governments very
much stimulate avoiding the use of English as a lingua franca, it is widely used so among
Scandinavians today (Börestam: 1987; Lund 2003: 77, among others)5 .
As we have seen, the language situation in Scandinavia is rather complicated. In addition to
the linguistic similarities, the three countries’ political, economic and cultural similarities are
important for their shared linguistic community. The most difficult point here, is that it often
feels more natural to speak English, than it is trying to understand ‘Scandinavian’. Without
the (reinforced) willingness for passive multilingualism, the problem of inter-Scandinavian
(semi-)communication would be really hard, if not impossible. Gregersen (2004: 34) thinks
that mutual comprehensibility is something that can only be obtained if the willingness to do
so is big enough, using both verbal and non-verbal means Scandinavians have at their
disposal. It is obvious that positive attitudes play a major role in this, and that is why I chose
to investigate just that.
In this chapter, I have gone into previous research within the field of Scandinavian
semicommunication, the conclusions that are based upon these researches, the development
these conclusions have undergone, and as possible explanations that have been given for this.
The results from previous research could serve as a background for my own, since the
hypotheses I will formulate in the next chapter, to a large extent will be based on these results.
5
Already in 1953, Haugen mentioned that ‘the desperation course is occasionally taken of using a non-Scandinavian language as the
medium of communication. This is only mentioned sporadically by the informants and always in relation to Danish.’ He illustrates this by
telling an anecdote about a Norwegian saying ‘when I am in Copenhagen, I ask the waiters to speak German.’ Back then, of course, the
position of English wasn’t as strong as it is today.
30
To conclude this chapter, I will therefore sum up the most striking conclusions that have been
drawn in the past, and their implications for the design and construction of my own research.
Summarizing the available research, we have found that:
(1)
Within the Scandinavian speech community, the greatest difficulties exist in
communication between Danes and Swedes. What is most striking about this (lack of) mutual
understanding, is that this comprehensibility has proven to be asymmetrical, i.e. it is easier for
Danes to understand spoken Swedish, than it is for Swedes to understand spoken Danish. In
contrast, Norwegians do not have too much difficulties understanding both Danish and
Swedish. Therefore, in my research, I have chosen to concentrate mainly on the DanishSwedish part of Scandinavian semicommunication.
(2)
Several researchers have pointed out the role of attitudes within this asymmetrical
comprehensibility between Danes and Swedes. I therefore think it would be exciting to see
whether Danish and Swedish children in fact do develop attitudes toward each other’s
languages in a different way, since this may turn out to play a major role in the willingness to
understand their Scandinavian neighbors, without having to use a lingua franca.
(3)
Many have pointed out the role that (possibilities of) contact play, since this generates
a greater receptive knowledge of, as well as familiarity with the neighboring language.
Whether this has much to do with geographical distances remains uncertain, though; there
have been made arguments for both the countries’ respective capitals, as well as the border
regions as having an advantage when it comes to language contact. Börestam’s (1987) attempt
to account for such a relationship between geographical distance toward the neighboring
country and the extent to which people understand the neighboring language was
unsuccessful. In my research, I have tried to avoid making a choice between these two
locations by conducting my research neither in the respective capitals, nor in the border
region, but instead on two locations of approximately the same distance to the neighboring
country.
Having taken all the previous conclusions in consideration, with special attention for the role
attitudes play in this, in the next chapter I will present my research questions and my
hypotheses for my own research.
31
4. Formulation of the problems, goals, and hypotheses
As we have seen in the previous chapter, positive attitudes could be a crucial factor for the
mutual comprehensibility to survive in the next decades. As we have seen, these attitudes
seem already to occur at a very young age. This makes it that much more interesting to see
what the reactions of Danish and Swedish children toward each other’s languages are, both
when they are aware of this (overt attitudes), and when they are not (covert attitudes). The
results of such research can throw new light on the interaction process of both groups, as well
as the willingness of children to make an effort to understand their fellow Scandinavians,
without the use of English as a lingua franca. It might even serve as an argument for or
against introducing a subject like ‘closely related languages’ in school, as suggested by Lund
(2003).
As described in the introduction, my thesis is to some extent based on a research done by
Schüppert (2009), who investigated the attitudes that pre-schoolers and young adults have
towards the other language. Although Schüppert did not find any significant differences in
attitude between the Danish and the Swedish group of pre-schoolers, she did among the
adults. This finding suggests that an asymmetrical development takes place, i.e. that Danish
children develop a different attitude towards the Swedish language, than the other way
around. Her data indicate that this change must take place between the age of 7 and 18. My
study aims at investigating which age period changes in attitude among Danes and Swedes
towards each other’s language take place more specifically.
Another restriction of Schüppert’s study was the fact that it exclusively focused on
consciously held attitudes towards a language. She suggests that future research could focus
more in-depth on both consciously and subconsciously held attitudes. With this research, I
tried to do just that. The method of my research, which I will describe in the next chapter, will
make it possible to look at some very interesting distinctions. First and foremost, the
difference between the Danish and Swedish children will be important, of course, but within
these languages, the difference between overt and covert attitudes could be equally
interesting.
This leads to the following research questions, which I will try to answer in my thesis:
1. a Will there be any differences in social judgments between Danish and Swedish children?
b Is a certain development in age perceptible?
32
2. a Will there be any difference between consciously and subconsciously held attitudes?
b. Where do these differences occur among the Danish and Swedish children?
c With regard to age, do covert attitudes develop parallel with overt attitudes?
My hypotheses are as follows:
1. a
I do think there will be differences in the way Danish and Swedish children judge each
other’s languages. As Haugen (1953), Teleman (1977) and Lundin/Christensen (2001) have
shown before, Swedes think more negatively about Danish than the other way around.
Therefore I think that Danish children will be more positive toward Swedish, than Swedish
children will be toward Danish.
b
I think there will be a development in age perceptible. I think the youngest children in
my research will not feel very strongly about the other language, neither positive nor negative,
but the older the children get, the more strongly their judgments will be. Especially in the case
of the Swedish children judging Danish, I think the trend of this development will be a
negative one, i.e. they will like the Danish language less well as they get older. For the Danish
children, I am not sure whether this is the case.
2. a
I do think that there are differences between the consciously and subconsciously held
attitudes, both among the Danish and the Swedish children. I think the children will express
their feeling more strongly, when they do not realize that they are judging the other language.
Therefore, I think the differences I mentioned in my hypotheses for the first question, will be
even clearer within the subconsciously held attitudes.
b
It is hard to say where exactly this differences will occur, but I think it is safe to say
that at least for some of the six personality features, significant differences between the way
Danish and Swedish children perceive the bilingual speaker using different guises will occur.
c
I do think that, with regard to age, covert attitudes develop similarly to overt attitudes,
albeit more strongly.
33
5. Method
In this chapter, I will describe the methodology of my actual research, as I conducted it in
Sweden and Denmark. I will thoroughly describe the stimulus material that was used, the
participants of the experiment, and the procedure.
5.1 Stimulus material
The auditory stimulus material for the matched guise experiment consisted of a 30 second
passage from out of a children’s book. Since the content of the passages would have to be
both absolutely neutral and fully understandable to even the youngest children, any
mentioning of names, age, country of origin and professions were to be avoided. The simplest
way to do this, I figured, was to have the children listen to a short passage from a fairy tale or
children’s book. The book I chose for this purpose, was the world-renown children’s novel
Can’t you sleep, Little bear? by Martin Waddell and Barbara Firth, of which I had the first
sentences translated to, and then recorded in, six different languages.
Besides recordings of Danish and Swedish, which were made by one and the same speaker,
recordings were also made of speakers of four other languages. For this purpose, I opted for
the fellow-Scandinavian language Norwegian, the somewhat less closely related (albeit fellow
Germanic) languages Dutch and Frisian respectively, and finally Indonesian, a language of
which I assumed children from neither Sweden nor Denmark would have any prior
knowledge about whatsoever. The reason I opted for a language totally unbeknown to the
subjects was that it could serve as a point of reference, that is, to see if attitudes toward the
totally unknown were equal in both countries. Furthermore, this could also provide
information about whether children would think negatively about all foreign languages, or just
about (relatively) familiar ones. There were, then, six taped voices, two of which were
“matched,” the other ones serving as “filler” voices. The six voices were presented to the
subjects with the maximum possible interval between successive presentations of the guises
of the bilingual speaker. Separate rating sheets were provided for the evaluation of each
speaker’s personality characteristics.
Attached to the back of the six response sheets, facing down, were several questions to be
completed. This packaging of questionnaires and response sheets permitted the subjects to
answer all items anonymously. Children were asked only their age and some questions about
34
their language background. Also the children were asked if they had been to the other country
before, or had been in contact with the other country’s language. Besides asking questions
regarding the language background of the participants and prior experience with the
neighboring language, I also decided on adding two questions where the participants had to
produce answers themselves, in order to (try to) find out why any changes in attitudes
occurred, rather than just pointing out the fact that they were taking place. The first of these
two questions aimed at getting more specific opinions about the other language, in the other
one I asked the children if maybe they knew a joke or an anecdote about people from the
neighboring country (or the neighboring language). This last question aimed at getting insight
in when children start to develop stereotypes about people from their neighboring country
and/or the language that is spoken there.
At the time of the recordings, the speaker we wanted to use as our bilingual was a 24-year old
woman who lived in Ystad, Sweden, whose parents were born and raised in Copenhagen. She
had lived in both countries at some point in her life, and she claimed to still speak Danish with
her family on a daily basis6. Since a crucial factor in using the matched guise technique is that
reactions are attributable to the language itself, much care was taken to select an appropriate
speaker who could take on both the Danish and the Swedish guise (in the sense of habitual
manners of speaking). This was done by organizing a voice parade, which would have to test
how native the bilingual speaker sounded to listeners with both language backgrounds.
The most straight-forward, although strict, way of doing this is to play listeners a number of
recordings made by native speakers, including one by a bilingual, and ask them to pick out the
foreign speaker. If the bilingual is not chosen as the foreigner more often than on a chance
level, he or she sounds sufficiently native. Both in the Danish and the Swedish voice parade,
five recordings were presented to listeners, one of which was made by the bilingual speaker.
For the Danish version, the four other recordings were produced by native Danish speakers
from the greater Copenhagen area, the same geographical area that the bilingual hailed from.
The filler recordings in the Swedish version were all recorded by speakers from Skåne, the
6
Furthermore, she claimed hardly ever to be exposed as not being a monolingual, and if so, only when she
already had said that her parents were Danish. She described the way she spoke Danish as “dronningedansk”
(‘the queen’s Danish’), and her Swedish as “Rigssvensk” (‘standard Swedish’).
35
southernmost province of Sweden, in which Ystad lies. The results of the tests are shown in
Table 3.
Table 3. Results of the voice parade for the Danish-Swedish bilingual. In both voice parades, our bilingual
was the third speaker of five.
Danish voice parade
Speaker 1
Speaker 2
Speaker 3
Speaker 4
Speaker 5
Chosen
0
0
3
12
0
5 recordings of the same content: 4 fillers (young women from Copenhagen) and Melina
(speaker 3)
15 listeners; Melina, the bilingual, was chosen as the foreigner 3/15 times: =PASS
Swedish voice parade
Speaker 1
Speaker 2
Speaker 3
Speaker 4
Speaker 5
Chosen
3
5
0
13
9
5 recordings of the same content: 4 fillers (young women from Skåne) and Melina (speaker 3)
30 listeners; Melina, the bilingual, was chosen as the foreigner 0/30 times: =PASS
As the table shows, in neither test the bilingual speaker was rated significantly less native
sounding than the other recordings. As a matter of fact, in both tests one or more recordings of
native speakers scored worse on a “nativeness” scale than the bilingual speaker. It is therefore
believed that all stimuli recorded for the experiment sounds natively Swedish and Danish.
Since in using the matched guise technique, it is absolutely crucial that the respondents do not
find out that the two languages of interest are actually recorded by one and the same speaker,
the other languages were also recorded by young women, all being somewhere in their
twenties. These women did not have any salient phonetic features in their voice that could
have provoked either extreme negative, nor extreme positive judgments. Of all the questions
asked by the children when undergoing the experiment, not a single one regarded even the
slightest suspicion about the nature of the recordings. There was no indication that any subject
became aware of the fact that a bilingual speaker occurred twice. It is therefore believe that
the matched guise experiment in itself was successful.
In order to get proper results from a survey, it is crucial to explain how various rating scales
work and what the various rating criteria are. Since the matched guise experiment was
conducted in front of a whole class, I opted on giving instructions orally prior to the actual
36
testing, since that was the only way to make sure that everyone had fully understood what was
being asked of them. I gave my instructions as suggested by Dörnyei (2010: 31).
5.2 Participants
Since Schüppert’s (2009) research did not elicit data from children in the age of 7 to 18, I
primarily concentrated on children in that range. Five different groups of children per
language were tested, each group existing of about 15-20 children (one class). The five groups
were based on age categories, coming from five different classes with a two-year interval (1st,
3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th class). Testing took place in Odense Municipality (Denmark) and
Kronoberg County (Sweden), both at approximately 200 km from the Danish-Swedish border.
Map 1 shows the exact locations of the areas in which testing took place, and the respective
distance from these locations to the neighbouring country.
Map 1. Testing locations in Denmark and Sweden respectively.
37
In total 161 children participated, five of which had to be excluded of further analysis for
different reasons. One Swedish child had only lived in Sweden for a year, and therefore did
not speak Swedish at the level of a native speaker of the same age; two Swedish children
failed to answer all the questions considering their consciously held attitude toward the
languages heard, as well as the questions on whether they knew with languages they were;
one Danish child produced too strange answers, for example answering that it had heard
Portuguese when actually its own language (i.e. Danish) was being played; and finally, one
Danish boy claimed he didn’t recognize his own language7. So 156 participants were left,
subdivided as follows:
Table 4. Number of children participating, divided by language and class
Danish
Swedish
Total
1st class
11
12
23
3rd class
22
15
37
5th class
20
14
34
7th class
22
15
37
9th class
12
13
25
Total
87
69
156
The Danish speaking sample comprised 87 scholars, the Swedish speaking sample 69. The
average in age wasn’t significant for any of the classes and both sexes were approximately
equally represented.
5.3 Procedure
A series of audio sequences in several languages was presented to children of five different
age groups from both countries. After having listened to the sequence for the first time, the
participants had to answer a series of questions regarding the speaker’s personality features,
using 5-point semantic differential scales. The children were asked to imagine what type of
person the speaker was, whether strange or normal, dumb or smart, unfriendly or friendly, etc.
(see Appendix A). The same passage was then presented a second time, after which the
children had to rate how they liked the language they had just heard on another 5-point scale,
with the opposites “very ugly” and “very nice”. Finally the participants were asked if they had
7
Although, contrary to the other Danish child that was excluded, this boy did seem to answer all questions quite
seriously, I didn’t analyze his results, mainly because I thought the very least condition for a child to be able to
take part in a language test, is that he or she would be able to recognize his own language.
38
recognized the language. The order in which the languages were presented to the children was
adapted to the country in which the experiment was held. The Danish participants heard the
audio sequences in the order Norwegian-Dutch-Swedish-Frisian-Indonesian-Danish, whereas
for the Swedish children the position of Danish and Swedish was exchanged.
After repeating this procedure six times (once for all six different languages), the children had
to answer a series of questions that were attached to the back of the six response sheets. These
questions regarded the age of the participant, their language background, prior experience
with the neighboring language, and two open questions.
The experiment was conducted individually for the youngest (i.e. first class) children, and in
front of all pupils at once in every other class. Before the experiment started, every participant
was familiarized with using semantic differential scales by listening to an oral introduction.
This introduction was given by a female experimenter living in the same region were the
experiment was run. The instructions were given as suggested by Dörnyei (2010: 31).
39
6. The questionnaire
After having presented my method in the last chapter, in this chapter I will go into the process
of constructing the questionnaire and the often difficult decisions I had to make in doing so,
regarding the issue of translation, the type of scales I have chosen to use (Likert or Semantic
Differential), and the number of steps these scales should contain. Also I will present some
changes I have made with respect to the content of the questionnaire, in order to give an
insight in my thinking process in constructing it. The final result of these decisions can be
seen in the Appendix, where the questionnaire is presented in both Danish and Swedish.
6.1 The issue of translating the questionnaire
Since the experiment was conducted in both Denmark and Sweden, the questionnaire would
have to be constructed in two different languages. As Dörnyei (2010: 50) describes, ‘the main
challenge in translating a questionnaire is to reconcile two somewhat contradictory criteria:
(a) the need to produce a close translation of the original text so that we can claim that the two
versions are equivalent, and (b) the need to produce natural-sounding texts in the target
language, similar to the words people would actually say.’ Dörnyei suggests two different
options of overcoming this challenge: ‘To consult external reviewers or to recruit an
independent translator to back-translate the target language version into the source language.
The second option, back-translation, involves an independent translator turning the L2 version
of the questionnaire back into the source language and then comparing the two texts: If the
back-translated version corresponds with the source language version, this is an indication
that both instruments are asking the same questions, which attests to the accuracy of the
translation’ (Dörnyei 2010: 50).
For the purpose of my questionnaire, I chose the latter option. This was particularly suitable
for this occasion, since Danish and Swedish share a large number of cognates. After writing
the questionnaire in Danish myself, I had it translated into Swedish by a native speaker of
Swedish, and then back-translated into Danish by a native speaker of Danish (who of course
was not made aware of the purpose of the questionnaire prior to the translation). As was to be
expected, the final translation corresponded to a satisfying extent with the original version,
suggesting that both versions were asking the same questions.
40
6.2 Rating scales
As described in chapter 2, the use of attitude as a research variable largely depends on
satisfactory measurement devices. The attitude-action relationship can be enhanced by greater
concern for reliability and validity in attitude measurement. Using multiple items rather than a
single item usually enhances internal reliability. In using multiple item scales, one and the
same concept is being investigated by using multiple items regarding a particular part of this
concept. Together, these items (should) generate a coherent answer regarding the concept of
interest. Similarly, ensuring a scale is one-dimensional and not confusing two or more
entities, aids the attitude-action relationship (Baker 1992: 17).
Although several ways of formulating questions within language attitudinal research exist,
they usually have in common that the respondent can choose between ready-made answers.
This means that they don’t have to produce the answers themselves, but rather are being
forced to pick between the alternatives that they are given, regardless of the respondent’s ideal
answer is one of these alternatives or not. It’s this way of conducting survey, i.e. the use of
closed-ended questions (see Dörnyei 2010: 26 f.), I’ve chosen to use for my thesis. One of the
main reasons for this decision is that coding and tabulation is fairly easy. This makes them
perfectly suited for quantitative statistical analyses. For this reason, this type of questions is
often referred to as ‘objective’ questions.
One specific type of closed-ended questions that I used in my survey, were rating scales. In
this type of questions, subjects are invited to choose their answers by marking one of the
points the scale offers. Those different points on the continuum of the scale mark different
grades of a certain category. The scales can either refer to certain features (like frequency or
quality), intensity (not at all → very much) or opinions (strongly agree → strongly disagree).
In order to make coding as easier, ordinal numbers can be given to all the point on a scale.
Ideally, one could make up a number of statements that correlate in such a (significant) way,
that summation of scores across these statements could produce one score per respondent.
Whether correlation between statements in fact is significant, and therefore, if there is internal
consistency reliability, is measured by the Cronbach Alpha coefficient. This is a figure
ranging from between zero and +1; the higher the number, the greater the internal consistency
reliability. If the Cronbach Alpha coefficient proves to be very low, either the particular
multiple item scale is too short or the different items have very little in common In order to be
41
sure of sufficient internal consistency reliability, one should aim at reliability coefficients in
excess of 0.70 (Dörnyei 2010: 95).
6.2.1 Likert scales
Different scaling techniques for measuring language attitudes exist, of which Likert scales is
one of the most commonly used. The Likert scale measures attitudes by making a series of
statements, each of which respondents answer to what extent they agree with them, by
marking one of the alternatives that are given. Responses are typically measured on a fivepoint scale. A statement on a Likert scale typically looks something like this:
“Spanish speakers should be offered bilingual education.”8
Strongly
Agree
agree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
One disadvantage in using Likert scales, is that the statements need to be very ‘characteristic’,
that is, that they should either express a clear positive, or a clear negative attitude. ‘Neutral’
statements don’t do the job quite as well, since they don’t provoke similar positive or negative
reactions, leaving room for interpretation.
6.2.2 Semantic differential scales
Semantic differential scales are similar to Likert scales in that several items can be used to
evaluate the same target, and multi-item scores are computed by summing up the individual
item scores. Again, this can only be done in the case of proven internal consistency. There are
certain clear differences, though. One clear advantage of this technique is that, unlike with
Likert scales, no clear statements have to be made up. This way we can avoid writing
statements (which is not always easy); instead, respondents are asked to indicate their answers
by marking a continuum between two bipolar adjectives on the extremes. Thus, the principle
of semantic differential is based upon the idea that most adjectives have logical opposites.
8
Examples from Baker (2006: 214)
42
Even if similar opposing adjectives aren’t obviously available, you can easily construct one
by putting ‘not’ or ‘un-’ in front of the original adjective (Dörnyei 2010: 30). Respondents
are being asked to give their opinion regarding a series of features about one stimulus.
semantic differential questions, thus, usually look something like this:
The Arabic Language9
Old fashioned
____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____
Modern
Easy
____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____
Difficult
Useful
____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____
Useless
Weak
____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____
Strong
Warm
____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____ : ____
Cold
The main advantages of semantic differential over Likert scales are perhaps best shown when
put next to their alternative Likert equivalents. If we, for example, were to use the same scales
as shown in the example shown above, but constructed to fit in a Likert scale, this would look
something like this:
Arabic is a modern language.
Strongly
Agree
agree
Neither agree
Disagree
nor disagree
Strongly
disagree
Arabic is easy to learn.
Strongly
Agree
agree
9
Neither agree
nor disagree
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
Examples from Baker (2006: 214)
43
Being able to speak Arabic is very useful.
Strongly
Agree
agree
Neither agree
Disagree
nor disagree
Strongly
disagree
The position of Arabic is very strong.
Strongly
Agree
agree
Neither agree
Disagree
nor disagree
Strongly
disagree
Arabic is a very warm language.
Strongly
agree
Agree
Neither agree
Disagree
nor disagree
Strongly
disagree
As we can see, not only would Likert scales take up much more space in a questionnaire, it
also involves more reading, and therefore requires much more testing time. Additionally, it is
very hard to come up with clear statements, especially regarding adjectives that are seemingly
inappropriate to the concept under consideration, as is shown in the last two questions in the
example above. It was Oppenheim (1992: 239)) who brought this point up, saying that ‘by
their more imaginative approach, such [i.e. semantic differential] scales can be used to cover
aspects that respondents can hardly put into words, though they do reflect an attitude or
feeling.’ One can imagine that this would especially be the case when a researcher is
interested in the subjects’ opinion about certain personality features, which makes Semantic
Differential Scales very much suitable for asking respondents about their subconsciously held
attitudes. In addition, semantic differential scales tap affective component as well as the
cognitive component of attitudes (Baker 1992: 18, 2006: 214).
Taking all the above mentioned arguments in consideration, especially the fact that
conducting semantic differential scales is easier than conducting Likert scales, as well as the
fact that they are easily adaptable to use in combination with the matched guise technique, I
decided on using semantic differential scales for my thesis.
44
6.3 Number of steps
Another important consideration in designing a questionnaire, is the decision on the number
of steps each scales should contain. Original Likert scales contained five response options, but
subsequent research has also used two-, three-, four-, six-, and seven-response options
successfully. The most common step numbers have been five or six, which raises a second
important question: Shall we use an even or an odd number of steps? (Dörnyei 2010: 28)
Some researchers prefer using an even number of response options because of the concern
that certain respondents might use the middle category (‘neither agree nor disagree’, ‘not
sure’, or ‘neutral’) to avoid making a real choice, that is, to take the easy way out. In my
survey, the respondents had to choose their answers out of five response options. The main
reason for this is that I didn’t want to deny my respondents the possibility of choosing the
‘neutral’ option, especially since also very young children would participate. From a
pedagogical point of view, I didn’t want to force them in making social judgments. Avoiding
having to make a choice by will, is in itself a choice too, and could provide just as useful
information as when the respondents would have been forced to make a decision.
6.4 Changes made in the construction process
Before I had come to the final design of the questionnaire (which is presented as a whole in
Appendix A), a number of items on it had undergone some major changes, or were deleted at
all. Right now I will go into some of those changes, and my thought process and motivations
in making them.
Within the semantic differential questions, several options besides the ones that made the final
version of the questionnaire had been taken into consideration. I decided on the final six in
order to make good pairs for three different dimensions: dynamic (strange…normal and oldfashioned…modern), status (dumb…smart and poor…rich), and solidarity (ugly…beautiful
and unfriendly…friendly). Furthermore I opted on putting all of the positive and negative
features on the same side for each question, since I figured that consistency would be helpful
to the children.
The first version of the questionnaire contained a question where the subjects had to choose
between nine different pictures for what they thought would be a suitable profession for the
45
speaker they had just been listening to. This type of question had been used successfully
before by Renée van Bezooijen (1994), in order to collect information on the social
geographical knowledge and connotations of the listeners. Van Bezooijen used stereotypical
representations of the professions actually practiced by the speakers in her research, which, in
addition to four other professions, could be ordered along a SES (Social Economic Status)
continuum. A shortcoming in her research was the lack of subjective evaluation of the
connotations the children had in picking the professions; i.e. how positive or negative they
actually thought about the professions in question.
Although, originally, I liked the idea of using this type of question, while at the same time
trying to intercept the shortcoming in its application by Van Bezooijen, I had several reasons
to delete it; first of all, the pictures were fairly old-fashioned, and therefore not really suitable
for representing modern day professions. Besides that, it were all pictures of women, which I
thought could provoke a negative attitude in itself. Also, since all of the pictures would have
to be presented after each of the six languages recorded, it would take the subjects a lot of
time answering all of the questions, and a lot of extra paper as well.
Contrary to the final version of the questionnaire, in the original one the personal questions on
language background, prior experience with the other language etc. were asked before the
matched guise test. As Dörnyei (2010: 48) points out, moving these personal questions to the
end of the questionnaire would have some major advantages, the most obvious of which
probably being the fact that I could ask the children directly about their experience with and
opinion about the neighboring language, and at the same time avoiding the risk that his would
influence their answers in the actual matched guise test. Another major advantage with this
change was that I now had to ask the subjects all of the questions just once instead of every
time they heard a new language, since I was only interested in their prior experience with and
opinion about Danish/Swedish anyway.
Originally I intended to play each passage just once. In the final version I decided on playing
them twice, though, mainly because in a small-scale pilot that I conducted at a primary school
in Groningen, most children asked me to do so anyway. Also I had to keep in mind that the
children had to perform two different tasks, one of which (answering the semantic differential
questions), wouldn’t be easy, and could ask so much of the children’s attention, that they
would have forgotten what the speaker sounded like by the time they had gotten to the
questions regarding the language. So I decided that the children had to answer the semantic
46
differential questions regarding the speaker after the first time the passage was played, and
those regarding the language after the second time.
In the original questionnaire I had a supplementary question regarding the consciously held
attitudes by the subjects, namely: How do you like this language, compared to your own
language?. Again, I would have had to ask the question six times for it not be discovered as
being solely about the Danish/Swedish attitudes. The most obvious solution would have been
to move the question to later on in the questionnaire, as I had done with the personal
questions. In fact, I deleted it, as this question can also be answered by simply subtracting the
scores for each language (both for the consciously, and the subconsciously held attitudes).
Besides that, I was made aware of the fact that performing this type of questions, that is,
comparing two languages with one another and pinning into metalinguistic awareness, could
turn out to be a difficult task, especially for the youngest children participating. I was hoping
to avoid this trap by not asking them to directly compare the two languages, and so I decided
on deleting the question.
Having made all these decisions, regarding the issue of translation, the type of scales I have
chosen to use, the number of steps these scales should contain, and the actual content of the
questionnaire, the questionnaire was definitive. Finally I was ready to actually carry out my
research, the results of which I will present in the next chapter.
47
7. Results
This chapter will contain of two parts, in which I will answer the questions asked in the
previous chapter. In the first part, I will go into Danish and Swedish listeners’ overt attitudes
were toward each other’s languages compared to those toward the other languages that were
tested. Furthermore, we will look at how these attitudes develop as the participants got older.
In the second part we will do the same, but for the covert attitudes. Also we will look at where
differences in covert attitudes occur for subjects from both countries, with regard to our
bilingual speaker’s personality features. Finally, the ways in which the participants’ overt and
covert attitudes developed with regard to age will be compared.
7.1 Overt attitudes
In this paragraph we will look at the consciously held (i.e. overt) attitudes toward Danish and
Swedish. First I will go into the beauty scores of the two languages in relation to the scores of
the other languages that were judged by the participants. Then we will take a closer look on
how Danish and Swedish listeners have judged their own, as well as each other’s languages,
first for all participants, then divided by age category in order to see how development in
attitudes take place.
7.1.1 Attitudes toward all languages
In this paragraph we will look at the beauty scores toward Danish and Swedish (i.e. the
answer to the question ‘How beautiful do you think this language sounds?’) in comparison to
the beauty scores for the other four languages that were judged by the participants. The scores
for the different languages are shown in Figure 1.
Independent-samples T-test showed that, on average:
-
Danes had more positive attitudes toward Norwegian (M=3.38, SE=0.12) than Swedes
(M=2.80, SE=0.13). This difference was significant (t(152)=3.35; p=0.001).
-
Danes had more positive attitudes toward Frisian (M=2.86, SE=0.14) than Swedes
(M=2.38, SE=0.13). This difference was significant (t(145)=2.47; p=0.015).
48
For Dutch and Indonesian, no significant differences in attitude between Danish and Swedish
listeners were found.
Figure 1. Overt attitudes toward all languages.
7.1.2 Attitudes toward Danish and Swedish
If we were to zoom in on the scores for Danish and Swedish only, this being the languages of
greatest interest for the purpose of this research, the first thing that becomes clear is that the
respective native languages of the groups of listeners clearly get judged best, both in
comparison to the respective neighboring languages, as well as to all other languages. The
real differences occur when it comes to the Danish and Swedish listener’s attitudes toward
each other’s languages. Whereas the Danish listeners find both their neighboring
Scandinavian languages more beautiful than the other three languages tested, this is not the
case the other way around. Figure 2 provides a more up-close look:
49
Figure 2. Overt attitudes toward Danish and Swedish.
Contrary to the results in the last figure, this time I have not put together the attitudes toward
the respective languages, but have instead chosen to compare the attitudes toward the
listener’s own language on the one hand, and those toward the neighboring language (i.e.
Swedish for the Danish listeners, and Danish for the Swedish listeners) on the other.
Independent-samples T-test showed that, on average:
-
There was no significant difference in the attitudes Danish and Swedish listeners had
toward their own respective languages (t(151)=-0.62; p=>0.05).
-
However, Danes had more positive attitudes toward Swedish (M=3.59, SE=0.12) than
Swedes had toward Danish (M=2.62, SE=0.14). This difference was significant
(t(152)=5.34; p<0.001).
These results would confirm the results of most previous researches so far, which have shown
that Swedes perceive Danish more negatively than the other way around (Haugen 1953;
Teleman 1977; and Lundin/Christensen 2001, among others). However, this does not tell us
50
whether there is a certain development in age perceptible. In the next paragraph, we will
examine if this is the case.
7.1.3 Development in attitudes
Remember, Schüppert (2009) had not found any significant differences in attitude between
Danish and Swedish preschoolers, but did so among adult participants. This finding suggests
that an asymmetrical development takes place, i.e. that Danish children develop a different
attitude towards the Swedish language, than the other way around. Schüppert’s data indicate
that this change must take place between the age of 7 and 18. Figures 3 and 4 show how
development in attitude takes place for children of five different age groups in my research.
Figure 3: Overt attitudes toward the own language for five different age groups
Figure 3 shows that the attitude toward the own language stays very stable among all age
groups. Both the Danish and the Swedish listeners judge their own language quite positively,
and this does not change as they get older. In fact, the difference between the attitudes Danish
51
and Swedish listeners had toward their own language, was not significant for any of the age
groups. Furthermore, there was no significant relationship between the age of the participants
and their attitudes toward their own language, neither for the Danes (r = -.132; p>0.05 (twotailed)), nor for the Swedes (r = -.122; p>0.05 (two-tailed)). Figure 4 shows whether this is
true with regard to the attitudes toward the neighboring language as well.
Figure 4: Overt attitudes toward the neighboring language for five different age groups
Contrary to what we have seen in Figure 3 with regard to the development in attitudes toward
the own language, Figure 4 shows that attitudes toward the neighboring language do tend to
get more negatively by age. Independent-samples T-test showed that, on average:
-
Danish children in 3rd class had more positive attitudes toward Swedish (M=4.14,
SE=0.20) than Swedish children in 3rd class had toward Danish (M=2.40, SE=0.36).
This difference was significant (t(22.26)=4.22; p<0.001).
52
-
Danish children in 7th class had more positive attitudes toward Swedish (M=3.45,
SE=0.21) than Swedish children in 7th class had toward Danish (M=2.80, SE=0.22).
This difference was significant (t(35)=2.12; p<0.05).
-
Danish children in 9th class had more positive attitudes toward Swedish (M=2.92,
SE=0.36) than Swedish children in 9th class had toward Danish (M=1.77, SE=0.28).
This difference was significant (t(23)=2.54; p=0.018).
For the children in 1st and 5th class, no significant differences in attitude between Danish and
Swedish listeners were found. These findings suggest that the subjects’ attitudes do tend to get
more negative as they get older. In fact, there was a significant negative relationship between
the age of the participants and their attitudes toward their neighboring language, both for the
Danes (r = -.346; p=0.001 (one-tailed)), and for the Swedes (r = -.363; p=0.001 (one-tailed)).
The older the participants are, the more negative their attitudes towards the neighboring
language get. This is especially the case for the Swedish listeners. Now that we have seen
how Danish and Swedish participants’ overt attitudes are, in the next paragraph we will
examine their covert attitudes.
7.2 Covert attitudes
In this paragraph we will look at the subconsciously held (i.e. covert) attitudes toward Danish
and Swedish. As in the previous paragraph regarding the overt attitudes, first I will go into the
beauty scores of the two languages in relation to the scores of the other languages that were
judged by the participants. Then we will take a closer look on how Danish and Swedish
listeners have judged their own, as well as each other’s languages, first for all participants,
then divided by age category in order to see how development in attitudes take place.
7.2.1 Covert attitudes toward all languages
In this paragraph we will look at the covert attitudes toward Danish and Swedish in
comparison to those toward the other four languages that were judged by the participants.
This was done by using multi-item scales (i.e. a series of semantic differential questions) in
the questionnaire. Ideally, these items would correlate in such a (significant) way, that
summation of scores across could produce one score per respondent. Whether correlation
53
between statements in fact is significant, and therefore, if there is internal consistency
reliability, is measured by the Cronbach Alpha coefficient (see paragraph 5.2 for a thorough
description). For all six languages tested, the reliability of the results was checked by
calculating Cronbach Alpha scores. The scores can be seen in Table 5.
Table 5. Cronbach Alpha scores for all languages
Language
Cronbach
Alpha
Norwegian
0,71
Dutch
0,70
Danish
0,87
Frisian
0,78
Indonesian
0,83
Swedish
0,83
Remember, in order to be sure of sufficient internal consistency reliability, one should aim at
reliability coefficients in excess of 0.70 (Dörnyei 2010: 95). As Table 3 shows, this was the
case for all languages. We can therefore assume that summations of scores can be made for
each language, thus producing one score per respondent, which can be considered their
subconsciously held (or covert) attitude toward this language. The scores for the different
languages are shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Covert attitudes toward all languages
54
On average, Figure 5 resembles to a great extent Figure 1 in paragraph 6.1, regarding the
consciously held (or overt) attitudes toward all languages. What distinguishes Figure 5 from
Figure 1, is that the Danish and Swedish children’s covert attitudes toward the nonScandinavian languages have become very equal. In fact, independent-sample T-test showed
that the difference in attitude toward Dutch, Frisian and Indonesian were not significant.
However, on average, Danes had more positive covert attitudes toward Norwegian (M=3.37,
SE=0.07) than Swedes (M=2.95, SE=0.09). This difference was significant (t(126.36)=3.73;
p<0.001).
7.2.2 Covert attitudes toward Danish and Swedish
If we were to zoom in on the scores for Danish and Swedish only, this being the languages of
greatest interest for the purpose of this research, we see that the scores for these languages
very much resemble those for the overt attitudes. Here too, the respective native languages of
the groups of listeners clearly get judged best, both in comparison to the respective
neighboring languages, as well as to all other languages. As for the overt attitudes, the real
differences occur when it comes to the Danish and Swedish listener’s attitudes toward each
other’s languages. Whereas the Danish listeners find both their neighboring Scandinavian
languages more beautiful than the other three languages tested, this is not the case the other
way around. Figure 6 provides a more up-close look.
Contrary to the results in the last figure, this time I have not put together the attitudes toward
the respective languages, but have instead chosen to compare the attitudes toward the
listener’s own language on the one hand, and those toward the neighboring language (i.e.
Swedish for the Danish listeners, and Danish for the Swedish listeners) on the other.
Independent-samples T-test showed that, on average:
-
There was no significant difference in the covert attitudes Danish and Swedish
listeners had toward their own respective languages (t(149,48)=-0.81; p=>0.05).
-
However, Danes had more positive covert attitudes toward Swedish (M=3.38,
SE=0.07) than Swedes had toward Danish (M=3.04, SE=0.09). This difference was
significant (t(151)=2.89; p=0.004).
These findings suggest that Danish children have more positive covert attitude toward
Swedish, than the other way around, as was the case for the overt attitudes. Now that we have
55
seen that covert attitudes confirm the results about the overt attitudes when interpreted as a
concealed way of investigating attitudes toward an entire language (i.e. by using multi-item
scales), it is interesting to see how the various semantic differential questions were answered
individually. That is, to see on what personality features our bilingual speaker scored better
among Danish and Swedish listeners. This will be done in the next paragraph.
Figure 6. Covert attitudes toward Danish and Swedish.
7.2.3 Semantic Differential Charts for the bilingual speaker
In the questionnaire, the participants were asked to judge the speaker on a series of
personality features, using 5-point semantic differential scales. In the previous paragraphs, we
have interpreted these multi-item scales as a concealed way of finding out the participants’
overt attitudes toward their own, as well as their neighboring language. In this paragraph, the
semantic differential questions will be analyzed individually. Figure 7 shows how the Danish
participants judged our bilingual speaker, using both her Danish and Swedish guises.
56
Figure 7. Semantic differential chart for bilingual speaker judged by Danish subjects
2,5
3
3,5
4
4,5
5
Strange … Normal
Personality features
Ugly … Beautiful
Dumb … Smart
Bilingual speaking Danish
Bilingual speaking Swedish
Old-fashioned … Modern
Unfriendly … Friendly
Poor … Rich
As Figure 7 shows, the bilingual speaker scored better among Danish listeners on all
personality features using her Danish guise, than she did using her Swedish guise (the further
to the right, the more positive the score for a particular personality feature). Paired-Sample Ttests showed that, on average:
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more normal among Danish listeners using her
Danish guise (M=4.43, SE=0.12) than using her Swedish guise (M=3.23, SE=0.14).
This difference was significant (t(86)=6.88; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more beautiful among Danish listeners using
her Danish guise (M=4.10, SE=0.13) than using her Swedish guise (M=3.61,
SE=0.11). This difference was significant (t(86)=3.52; p=0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as smarter among Danish listeners using her
Danish guise (M=4.13, SE=0.12) than using her Swedish guise (M=3.44, SE=0.12).
This difference was significant (t(84)=4.01; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more modern among Danish listeners using
her Danish guise (M=3.94, SE=0.14) than using her Swedish guise (M=2.80,
SE=0.14). This difference was significant (t(86)=6.51; p<0.001).
57
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more friendly among Danish listeners using
her Danish guise (M=4.64, SE=0.07) than using her Swedish guise (M=4.10,
SE=0.10). This difference was significant (t(86)=5.37; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as richer among Danish listeners using her
Danish guise (M=3.86, SE=0.12) than using her Swedish guise (M=3.14, SE=0.10).
This difference was significant (t(86)=4.60; p<0.001).
Figure 8 shows how the Danish participants judged our bilingual speaker, using both her
Danish and Swedish guises.
Figure 8. Semantic differential chart for bilingual speaker judged by Swedish subjects
2
2,5
3
3,5
4
4,5
5
Strange … Normal
Personality features
Ugly … Beautiful
Dumb … Smart
Bilingual speaking Danish
Bilingual speaking Swedish
Old-fashioned … Modern
Unfriendly … Friendly
Poor … Rich
As Figure 8 shows, the bilingual speaker scored better among Swedish listeners on all
personality features using her Swedish guise, than she did using her Danish guise (the further
to the right, the more positive the score for a particular personality feature). Paired-Sample Ttests showed that, on average:
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more normal among Swedish listeners using
her Swedish guise (M=4.64, SE=0.09) than using her Danish guise (M=2.49,
SE=0.15). This difference was significant (t(66)=12.42; p<0.001).
58
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more beautiful among Swedish listeners using
her Swedish guise (M=4.10, SE=0.12) than using her Danish guise (M=2.79,
SE=0.14). This difference was significant (t(67)=7.92; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as smarter among Swedish listeners using her
Swedish guise (M=4.32, SE=0.12) than using her Danish guise (M=3.22, SE=0.14).
This difference was significant (t(68)=6.67; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more modern among Swedish listeners using
her Swedish guise (M=4.04, SE=0.13) than using her Danish guise (M=2.87,
SE=0.13). This difference was significant (t(66)=6.49; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as more friendly among Swedish listeners using
her Swedish guise (M=4.54, SE=0.10) than using her Danish guise (M=3.68,
SE=0.13). This difference was significant (t(68)=6.02; p<0.001).
-
The bilingual speaker was perceived as richer among Swedish listeners using her
Swedish guise (M=4.93, SE=0.12) than using her Danish guise (M=3.15, SE=0.12).
This difference was significant (t(67)=4.56; p<0.001).
In this paragraph we have seen that our bilingual speaker scored significantly better among
Danish listeners using her Danish guise, and significantly better among Swedish listeners
using her Swedish guise. As a matter of fact, this was true for all personality features. Our
bilingual was perceived as more normal, more beautiful, smarter, more modern, more friendly
and richer among Danish listeners when using her Danish guise, whereas the opposite was
true for the Swedish listeners. However, with regard to age, it remains unclear whether covert
attitudes develop in a similar way as overt attitudes do. This will be investigated in the next
paragraph.
7.2.4 Development in attitude
Remember, Schüppert (2009) had not found any significant differences in attitude between
Danish and Swedish pre-scholars, but did so among adult participants. This finding suggests
that an asymmetrical development takes place, i.e. that Danish children develop a different
attitude towards the Swedish language, than the other way around. Schüppert’s data indicate
that this change must take place between the age of 7 and 18. Figures 9 and 10 show how
development in attitude takes place for children of five different age groups in my research.
59
Figure 9: Covert attitudes toward the own language for five different age groups
Just as for the overt attitudes, Figure 9 shows that the covert attitude toward the own language
stays stable among all age groups. The Danish and the Swedish listeners judge their own
language quite positively, and this does not change as they get older. In fact, the difference
between the covert attitudes Danish and Swedish listeners had toward their own language,
was not significant for any of the age groups. Furthermore, there was no significant
relationship between the age of the participants and their covert attitudes toward their own
language, neither for the Danes (r = -.139; p>0.05 (two-tailed)), nor for the Swedes (r = -.225;
p>0.05 (two-tailed)). Figure 10 shows whether this is true with regard to the covert attitudes
toward the neighboring language as well.
60
Figure 10: Covert attitudes toward the neighboring language for five different age groups
Contrary to what we have seen in Figure 9 with regard to the development in covert attitudes
toward the own language, Figure 10 shows that covert attitudes toward the neighboring
language do tend to get slightly more negatively by age. Independent-samples T-test showed
that, on average:
-
Danish children in 3rd class had more positive covert attitudes toward Swedish
(M=3.54, SE=0.13) than Swedish children in 3rd class had toward Danish (M=2.69,
SE=0.19). This difference was significant (t(34)=3.83; p=0.001).
-
Danish children in 9th class had more positive covert attitudes toward Swedish
(M=3.17, SE=0.14) than Swedish children in 9th class had toward Danish (M=2.49,
SE=0.21). This difference was significant (t(22)=2.70; p=0.013).
For the children in 1st, 5th and 7th class, no significant differences in covert attitude between
Danish and Swedish listeners were found. These findings suggest that, as for the overt
attitudes, that the subjects’ covert attitudes tend to get more negative as they get older. In fact,
61
there was a significant negative relationship between the age of the participants and their
covert attitudes toward their neighboring language, both for the Danes (r = -.196; p=0.036
(one-tailed)), and for the Swedes (r = -.240; p=0.024 (one-tailed)). The older the participants
are, the more negative their attitudes towards the neighboring language get. From these
figures alone, though, it is hard to say whether covert attitudes just develop in a similar way as
overt attitudes do, or, as I hypothesized, they will also develop more strongly. This will be
investigated in the next paragraph.
7.2.5 Comparison of the development of overt and covert attitudes
In paragraph 6.1.3 and 6.2.4, we have seen the ways in which both overt and covert attitudes
develop. We have seen that for both groups of participants, the attitude toward their own
language stayed fairly stable, whereas the attitude toward their neighboring language turned
more negative as the participants got older. This was especially the case for the Swedish
subjects. However, we do not know yet, whether this development occurred parallel for both
the overt and the covert attitudes. In order to see if this is the case, the graphs from paragraph
6.1.3.and 6.2.4 are combined. This way, we can see how attitudes develop in four different
ways:
(1) Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their own language;
(2) Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their neighboring language;
(3) Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their own language; and
(4) Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their neighboring language.
Figure 11 shows the first of these options.
62
Figure 11. Development of Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their own language
As Figure 11 shows, the Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their own
language develop rather similarly, both staying very high at all times. In fact, a PairedSamples T-test showed that the difference between overt and covert attitudes was not
significant for any of the age categories. Figure 12 shows whether this was the case for the
Danish participants’ attitudes toward Swedish.
Here too, the overt and covert attitudes seem to develop rather similarly with regard to age. If
anything, the overt attitude seems to undergo a stronger development than the covert attitude,
contrary to what I had hypothesized. A paired-Samples T-test showed that, on average,
Danish 3rd class participants’ overt attitudes toward their neighboring language were more
positive (M=4.10, SE=0.20) than their covert attitudes (M=3.48, SE= 0.13). This difference
was significant (t(19)=4.14; p=0.001).
63
Figure 12. Development of Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their neighboring
language
For the other age categories, no significant differences were found, suggesting that both our
Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes develop parallel, with one exception (though
not at either end of the age range). Whether this is the case for the Swedish participants as
well, is shown in Figure 13 and 14.
Just as for the Danish participants, the Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward
their own language seem to develop similarly, both staying high at all times. A PairedSamples T-test showed that, on average:
-
Swedish 3rd class participants’ overt attitudes toward their own language were more
positive (M=4.77, SE=0.17) than their covert attitudes (M=4.59, SE= 0.18). This
difference was significant (t(12)=2.42; p=0.032).
-
Swedish 5th class participants’ overt attitudes toward their own language were more
positive (M=4.69, SE=0.13) than their covert attitudes (M=4.27, SE= 0.16). This
difference was significant (t(12)=2.33; p=0.038).
64
Figure 13. Development in Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their own language
For the other age categories, no significant differences were found. Since neither of the two
difference occurred at either end of the age range, this suggest that the Swedish participants’
overt and covert attitudes toward their own language developed rather similarly. Figure 14
shows whether this was the case for their overt and covert attitudes toward Swedish, too.
As we have seen in the previous paragraphs, the Swedish attitudes toward the Danish
language get more negatively as the participants get older. As Figure 11 show, this is even
more the case for the Swedish participants’ overt attitudes, than is the case for their covert
attitudes. A Paired-Samples T-test showed that, on average:
-
Swedish 5th class participants’ overt attitudes toward their neighboring language were
more negative (M=2.57, SE= 0.20) than their covert attitudes (M=3.29, SE=0.17).
This difference was significant (t(13)=-4.42; p=0.001).
65
-
Swedish 7th class participants’ overt attitudes toward their neighboring language were
more negative (M=2.80, SE= 0.22) than their covert attitudes (M=3.22, SE=0.17).
This difference was significant (t(14)=2.624; p=0.02).
-
Swedish 9th class participants’ overt attitudes toward their neighboring language were
more negative (M=1.83, SE= 0.30) than their covert attitudes (M=2.49, SE=0.21).
This difference was significant (t(11)=3.93; p=0.002).
Figure 14. Development of Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward their neighboring
language
For the two youngest age categories, no significant differences were found. However, the fact
that this was the case for the three oldest age categories, suggests that the Swedish
participants’ overt attitudes toward Danish turn negative more quickly and more drastically
than their covert attitudes.
66
In this chapter, we have looked at the results of both our participants’ overt and covert
attitudes. We have seen what the Danish and Swedish listeners’ overt attitudes were toward
each other’s languages compared to those toward the other languages that were tested. Also
we have seen how these attitudes developed as the participants got older. The same thing has
been done for their covert attitudes. Finally, we have compared the ways in which the
participants’ overt and covert attitudes developed with regard to age. What conclusions can be
drawn based on these findings, will be discussed in the next chapter.
67
8. Conclusions
In chapter 4, I formulated the following research questions:
1. a Will there be any differences in social judgments between Danish and Swedish children?
b Is a certain development in age perceptible?
2. a Will there be any difference between consciously and subconsciously held attitudes?
b. Where do these differences occur among the Danish and Swedish children?
c With regard to age, do covert attitudes develop parallel with overt attitudes?
In this chapter, I will answer these questions, using the results we have seen in last chapter.
Also I will test the hypotheses I have formulated with regard to these questions.
8.1 (1a) Will there be any differences in social judgments between Danish and Swedish
children?
The relevant results for answering this question are presented in paragraphs 7.1.1 and 7.1.2.
Here we have seen that there was no significant difference in the way Danish and Swedish
children judged their own respective languages. However, when judging each other’s
language, the Swedish children’s attitudes toward Danish were significantly more negative
than the Danish children’s attitudes toward Swedish. This result confirmed my hypothesis that
Danish children would be more positive toward Swedish, than Swedish children would be
toward Danish.
8.2 (1b) Is a certain development in age perceptible?
The relevant results for answering this question are presented in paragraph 7.1.3. Here we
have seen that the attitudes Danish and Swedish children had toward their own language stays
very stable among all age groups. Both the Danish and the Swedish listeners judge their own
language quite positively, and this does not change as they get older. In fact, the difference
between the attitudes Danish and Swedish listeners had toward their own language, was not
68
significant for any of the age groups. Furthermore, there was no significant relationship
between the age of the participants and their attitudes toward their own language.
However, when we look at the attitudes Danish and Swedish children had toward each other’s
languages, we see that the attitudes do tend to get more negative as the participants get older.
This is especially the case for the Swedish listeners. Danish children from 3rd, 7th, and 9th class
have significantly more positive attitudes toward Swedish, than Swedish children from these
classes had toward Danish. For the children in 1st and 5th class, no significant differences in
attitude between Danish and Swedish listeners were found.
In fact, there was a significant negative relationship between the age of the participants and
their attitudes toward their neighboring language. These results suggest that, as hypothesized,
attitudes do develop as the participants get older. The youngest children did not feel very
strongly about the neighboring language, but the older the children get, the more strongly
their judgments were. Especially in the case of the Swedish children judging Danish, the trend
of this development was a negative one. Again, this matches the hypothesis.
8.3 (2a) Will there be any difference between consciously and subconsciously held attitudes?
The relevant results for answering this question are presented in paragraphs 7.2.1 and 7.2.2.
Here we have seen that, just as for the overt attitudes, there was no significant difference in
the way Danish and Swedish children judged their own respective languages. However, when
judging each other’s language, the Swedish children’s covert attitudes toward Danish were
significantly more negative than the Danish children’s covert attitudes toward Swedish.
Again, this confirms the results from the overt attitudes, which suggests that there may not be
any differences between the Danish and Swedish children’s overt and covert attitudes after
all. This refutes my hypothesis that this would be the case. Moreover, I hypothesized that the
participants would express their feeling more strongly, when they would not be aware of the
fact that they were judging their neighboring language, causing the differences for the covert
attitudes to be even clearer than those for the overt attitudes. In fact, the difference between
Swedish children’s attitudes toward Danish, and Danish children’s attitudes toward Swedish
have gotten smaller, instead of bigger.
69
8.4 (2b) Where do these differences occur among the Danish and Swedish children?
The relevant results for answering this question are presented in paragraph 7.2.3. As we can
see here, my hypothesize that ‘at least for some of the six personality features, significant
differences between the way Danish and Swedish children perceive the bilingual speaker
using different guises will occur’, was quite an understatement. In fact, our bilingual speaker
scored significantly better for all personality features among Danish listeners using her
Danish guise, and significantly better among Swedish listeners using her Swedish guise. This
means that our bilingual was perceived as more normal, more beautiful, smarter, more
modern, more friendly and richer among Danish listeners when using her Danish guise,
whereas the opposite was true for the Swedish listeners.
8.5 (2c) With regard to age, do covert attitudes develop parallel with overt attitudes?
The relevant results for answering this question are presented in paragraphs 7.2.4 and 7.2.5.
Here we have seen that just as for the overt attitudes, Danish and Swedish children’s covert
attitudes toward their own language stays very stable among all age groups. Both the Danish
and the Swedish listeners judge their own language quite positively, and this does not change
as they get older. There was no significant relationship between the age of the participants and
their covert attitudes toward their own language. For participants from both countries, though,
the covert attitudes toward the neighboring language do tend to get slightly more negative by
age. In fact, there was a significant negative relationship between the age of the participants
and their covert attitudes toward their neighboring language. Just as for the overt attitudes,
this is especially the case for the Swedish listeners.
Now that we have seen that for both groups of participants, the attitude toward their own
language stayed fairly stable, whereas the attitude toward their neighboring language turned
more negative as the participants got older, we can now see whether this development
occurred parallel for both the overt and the covert attitudes. The Danish participants’ overt
and covert attitudes toward their own language develop rather similarly, both staying very
high for all age categories. This also seemed to be the case for the Danish children’s overt and
covert attitudes toward Swedish. If anything, the overt attitude seems to undergo a stronger
development than the covert attitude, contrary to what I had hypothesized. Only for the
Danish children in 3rd class this difference was in fact significant, suggesting that both our
70
Danish participants’ overt and covert attitudes develop parallel, with one exception (though
not at either end of the age range).
Just as for the Danish participants, the Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward
their own language seem to develop similarly, both staying high at all times. However, the
overt attitudes of the children in 3rd and 5th class were significantly more positive than their
covert attitudes. Since neither of the two difference occurred at either end of the age range,
though, it is hard to say whether the Swedish participants’ overt and covert attitudes toward
their own language really do develop differently. Looking at the way Swedish children judge
their neighboring language, we see that the overt attitudes of the children in the oldest three
age categories were significantly more negative than their covert attitudes. This suggests that
the Swedish participants’ overt attitudes toward Danish turn negative more quickly and more
drastically than their covert attitudes. Just as in paragraph 8.3, this refutes my hypothesis that
covert attitudes would come through more strongly.
In this chapter, I have answered the research questions I had formulated in chapter 4. We have
looked at Danish and Swedish children overt and covert attitudes, both toward their own, and
toward each other’s language. In general on could say, that Danes are more positive toward
Swedish, than Swedes are toward Danish. This difference gets even bigger as the children get
older. What this means with regard to future inter-Scandinavian communication, I will go into
in the final chapter.
71
9. Discussion
In this chapter we will discuss what the real-life implications of the conclusions from the
previous chapter might be. Something particularly interesting is the fact that Swedish
children’s overt attitudes toward Danish are more negative than their covert attitudes. In other
words, they hold more negative attitudes toward the Danish language when they are aware of
the fact that this is what they are judging, than if they are not aware of this. Following
Lambert’s line of thought (i.e. that covert attitudes reveal more about the true feelings of
subjects toward the out-group than overt attitudes do), this could mean that for one reason or
another, Swedish children feel that they are supposed to dislike the Danish language, whereas
they might not feel that strongly in reality. It might very well be the case that general
stereotypes Swedes develop toward Danes and/or the Danish language play a role in this.
Unfortunately, this brings us to a shortcoming of this present study.
At the end of the questionnaire, I had added two questions where the participants had to
produce answers themselves, in order to (try to) find out why any changes in attitudes
occurred, rather than just pointing out the fact that they were taking place. One of my more
particular goals with these two questions was to get insight in at what age children start to
develop stereotypes about people from their neighboring country and/or the language that is
spoken there. In reality, however, I got nothing out of these questions except for a lot of nonresponse10. Out of 87 Danish participants, only 8 were able to come up with an answer for the
last question (Do you know an anecdote or a joke about Sweden?). The Swedish participants
did even worse, with only 2 answers for 69 participants. Needless to say that even for an
“additional bonus”, this is a rather meager result, let alone that it would in any way help
answering the question why changes in attitudes take place.
In hindsight, a better way to (at least try to) do this, would have been to carry out qualitative
interviews with random samples from the subjects, or maybe even with subjects’ parents
and/or teachers. Future research could focus more in-depth on this. Unfortunately, for my
master thesis, I did not have enough time or resources to do this myself. So, in failing to
10
This was in fact already predicted by Dörnyei, who states that ‘[one] should be prepared that the ratio of
appropriate completion of open-ended questions tends to be relatively low compared with closed-ended items;
therefore, such questions should be seen as additional “bonuses” to the dataset rather than an integral part of the
expected results.’ (Dörnyei 2010: 48)
72
answer why certain attitudes were taking place, where does pointing out that they were taking
place leave us?
If all the research agrees that the mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish is
decreasing, where does that leave the idea of one Scandinavian language community, where
everyone is supposed to be able to communicate in their own language? The command of
English in the Nordic countries is good enough, on the other hand, that it could easily function
as a lingua franca. So why not do just that? In order for some kind of inter-Scandinavian
language community to maintain, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes need to have as much selfesteem when trying to decode their neighboring languages, as they do when hearing English.
This can only be obtained, if the willingness to understand the other Scandinavian languages
exists. In previous research within the field of Scandinavian semicommunication, several
researchers have pointed out the great role that the willingness to understand the neighboring
languages without having to use a third language plays (Braunmüller 1991: 246; Gregersen
2004: 34, among others). If this really is the case, the fact that in my research Danish and
Swedish children’s attitudes toward each other’s languages got more negative as the
participants get older, does not bode well.
73
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Appendix A: Danish version of the questionnaire
A Questions after each segment
The segment is played for the first time
Hvordan synes du, at taleren lyder?
mærkelig
0
0
0
0
0
normal
grim
0
0
0
0
0
smuk
dum
0
0
0
0
0
klog
gammeldags
0
0
0
0
0
moderne
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
rig
0
0
0
0
smukt
uvenlig
fattig
0
0
venlig
The segment is played a second time
Hvordan synes du, at sproget lyder?
grimt
0
Ved du, hvilket sprog det var?
0
Ja, det var …
0
Nej, det ved jeg ikke.
78
B Personal details
Hvor gammel er du?
Hvornår har du fødselsdag?
Hvilket (eller hvilke) sprog taler du hjemme?
0
Kun dansk
0
Ikke (kun) dansk, men (også)…
Hvordan synes du, at dit eget sprog lyder?
grimt
0
0
0
0
0
smukt
Hvor tit hører du svensk, fx I radion eller fjernsynet?
0
(Næsten) aldrig
0
En gang imellem
0
(Næsten) hver dag
Hvor mange gange har du været i Sverige?
0
Aldrig
0
Et par gange
0
Tit
Hvad synes du om det svenske sprog?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
Kender du en morsom hstorie, eller en vittighed, om Sverige, svenskere eller det svenske
sprog?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
79
Appendix B: Swedish version of the questionnaire
A Questions after each segment
The segment is played for the first time
Hur tycker du att talaren låter?
konstig
0
0
0
0
0
normal
ful
0
0
0
0
0
vacker
dum
0
0
0
0
0
klok
gammaldags
0
0
0
0
0
modern
otrevlig
0
0
0
0
0
trevlig
fattig
0
0
0
0
0
rik
0
0
0
0
vackert
The segment is played a second time
Hur tycker du att språket låter?
fult
0
Vet du vilket språk det var?
0
Ja, det var …
0
Nej, det vet jag inte.
80
B Personal details
Hur gammal är du?
När fyller du år?
Vilket eller vilka språk talar du hemma?
0
Bara svenska
0
Inte (bara) svenska, utan även…
Hur tycker du att ditt eget språk låter?
fult
0
0
0
0
0
vackert
Hur ofta hor du danska, till exempel på radio eller TV?
0
(Nästan) aldrig
0
Ibland
0
(Nästan) varje dag
Hur ofta har du varit I Danmark?
0
Aldrig
0
Några gånger
0
Ofta
Vad tycker du om det danska språket?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
Känner du till en rolig historia eller ett skämt om Danmark?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
81
Appendix C: English translation of the questionnaire
A Questions after each segment
The segment is played for the first time
How do you think the speaker sounds?
strange
0
0
0
0
0
normal
ugly
0
0
0
0
0
beautiful
dumb
0
0
0
0
0
smart
old-fashioned
0
0
0
0
0
intelligent
unfriendly
0
0
0
0
0
friendly
poor
0
0
0
0
0
rich
0
0
0
beautiful
The segment is played a second time
How do you think the language sounds?
ugly
0
0
Do you know which language you’ve just been listening to?
0
Yes, it was …
0
No, I don’t know.
82
B Personal details
What’s your age?
When is your birthday?
What languages do you speak at home?
0
Only Danish/Swedish
0
Not (only) Danish/Swedish, but (also)…
How do you think your own language sounds?
ugly
0
0
0
0
0
beautiful
How often do you hear Danish/Swedish, for example on radio or TV??
0
(Almost) never
0
Sometimes
0
(Almost) every day
How often have you been to Denmark/Sweden?
0
Never
0
A few times
0
Often
What’s your opinion on the Danish language?
…………………………………………………………………………....................................
Do you know an anecdote or a joke about Sweden?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………....
83