Browsing by Subject "foreign language speakers"

The increasingly strong position of the English language raises discussion both locally and globally. In this thesis I expand on the discussions taking place in Finland by exploring the language attitudes of foreign language speakers regarding the English language. The goals of this thesis are to find out how foreign language speakers in Helsinki and the capital region experience the English language and how they would experience a possible language policy change that would add English to Helsinki's service languages. Furthermore, my thesis examines whether the Helsinki city councilors support the addition of English to the city's official service languages. In my thesis, I used theories dealing with language attitudes and language policy, as well as previous studies such as the national survey on language attitudes conducted by Leppänen et al. (2009). I collected research material by preparing two separate surveys, one of which I distributed online to foreign language speakers and the other to the city councilors of Helsinki. All in all, I received 282 answers from foreign language speakers and 31 answers from the city council members, which I examined using quantitative analysis and previous studies that relate to language attitudes. According to the results of this thesis, almost 80% of foreign language speakers find the addition of English to the service languages to be beneficial and a factor that would make it easier for them to stay in Finland. Therefore, based on the results, it can be concluded that the attitudes of foreign language speakers are mostly positive towards the English language. Furthermore, nearly half of the city councilors that responded to my survey support adding English to the official service languages in Helsinki. The results of the study provide a directory to the language attitudes of foreign language speakers residing in Helsinki and the capital region; hence, the results could possibly be used when researching and deciding on future language policies for the city of Helsinki.