| Summary: | 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.
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