Suomių ir švedų dvikalbystė Suomijoje 1917 - 2016 m.: kalbų statusas ir kalbinė politika

• Main Author: Griciūtė, Rūta
• Other Authors: Potašenko, Grigorijus
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: Lithuanian; English
• Published: Institutional Repository of Vilnius University 2016
• Subjects: sami
• Online Access: http://vu.lvb.lt/VU:ELABAETD35905665&prefLang=en_US

The title of the paper is „Finnish and swedish bilingualism in Finland 1917 – 2016: languages status and language policy“. Its aim is to evaluate the finnish and the Finland swedish bilingualism during its independency, which was established in 1917. The main objectives are to analize and interpret Finland‘s language policy towards the finns and the Finland swedes 1917– 2016 and explore bilingualism practise. There is the need to evaluate bilingually oriented language policy not only on a state level, but also place it on a European multilingual environment. Therefore, Finland‘s bilingualism needs to be compared from other language policy perspectives, like one-language based lithuanian policy and multilingual European language policy. It appears that Finns nationalism was too weak to develop into the „one nation-one language“ state, therefore it had to start living with swedes on equal terms and form a political nation together, which is based on a two language identity. This identity is integrated into its language policy model, which seeks to protect and promote bilingualism. There are even some cases, when the finnish language might be treated as a minority one; whereas the Finland swedes will have more privileges in some country areas than the finns. The results surprisingly show that when it comes to finnish language policy, according to Europe‘s concept of multilingualism, Lithuania‘s one-language based policy exceeds at its people‘s individual multilingualism. Although finnish language policy is well reserved for protecting national minority rights, like the Sami people or the Ålanders. The latter minority group can even create their own language policy, that is monolingually swedish, and live in their own autonomic region while still politically belonging to Finland. It is a dichotomy, meaning that Finland‘s language policy is both bilingual and monolingual at the same time, meaning its liberal perception towards other languages. Furthemore, the paper briefly explores the critical view on Finland‘s bilingual language policy on mandatory swedish, as well as demonstrates lithuanian language defenders‘ attitude towards multilingualism.