This research aims to examine attitudes towards linguistic variations,in terms of dialects in Sweden. Previous research has shown that the Swedish population perceives particular dialects more preferable than others and that these attitudes are established at an early stage in their lives. In contrast to prior research, thisessay will focus on whether participants associate particular Swedish dialects with specific characteristics and whether their own dialectal affiliations influenced their viewpoints. To gather data, 218 speakers of various Swedish dialects were asked to complete a survey where they were assigned the task of pairing different characters, with distinct characteristics, featured in an animated film with seven different Swedish dialects. In short, the results show that the participants predominantly voted based on stereotypical notions associated with the various dialects. The dialect spoken in northern Sweden, “norrländska” was a majority of the time paired with the calm and shy character, while both “dalmål” and “gotländska” were often paired with the kind character. Furthermore, the evil, unpopular, beautiful, rich, and eager character was most frequently paired with “stockholmska.” Conversely, the playful and popular character was by a majority of the participants paired with “göteborgska.” The poor and scrawnycharacter was usually paired with “småländska” while most participants stated that “skånska” was the most suitable dialect for the unintelligent, ugly, and chubby character. Moreover, the results also suggest that the participants ́ dialectal affiliations influenced their attitudes as many perceived their own dialect as positive while a majority, regardless of dialect, perceived “göteborgska” as positive while they deemed “stockholmska” as unfavourable.

Denna uppsats, ”Ungdomar tycker, talar och känner om en språklig variation – En kvalitativ fokusgruppsstudie om attityder till och benämningar för migrationsrelaterad språklig variation”, har som syfte att undersöka olika attityder till migrationsrelaterad språklig variation bland ungdomar i Värmland. Samt att kartlägga vad den språkliga variation kallas av ungdomarna. Detta undersöks i uppsatsen genom kvalitativa fokusgruppsintervjuer med gymnasieungdomar i Värmland. I intervjuerna får informanterna lyssna på och diskutera förinspelade talprov. Den insamlade empirin analyseras med hjälp av teorier om attityder samt utifrån begreppen språkideologi och schibbolet. Ansatsen är explorativ och utgår från det folklingvistiska forskningsparadigmet. Studiens analys av den insamlade empirin visar på en spridning av attityder bland ungdomarna. Framträdande i resultat var bland annat informanternas positiva känslor till variationen samt en föreställning om sammankopplingen mellan den språkliga variationen och lågstatusyrken. Ett av studiens huvudsakliga slutsatser är att det i empirin framkommer en bild av att informanterna inte har tydliga uppfattningar om hur de ska benämna den migrationsrelaterade språkliga variation, istället använder de främst deskriptiva sätt för att benämna attitydobjektet. / This essay, ”Adolescents think, talk and feel about a linguistic variation - A qualitative focus group study on attitudes to and names for migration-related linguistic variation” has as its purpose to explore adolescents attitudes to so called migration-related linguistic variation. And also to examine how the informants name this variation. This is done through qualitative focus-group interviews with sixteen- to eighteen-year old gymnasium school students in the county of Värmland, Sweden. In the interviews the informants listen to and discuss recorded samples of the variation in question. The collected data is analyzed using scientific theories on attitudes and the concepts of language ideology and shibboleth. The onset is explorative and uses the folk linguistic paradigm as a frame. Analysis of the collected data shows a variation of attitudes amongst the adolescents ranging from positive feelings towards the linguistic variation to the idea that there is a connection between said variation and low-status occupations. One of the main conclusions of the study is that the data shows an unwillingness or inability amongst the informants to give the linguistic variation a name.