Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

derstood the questions and having them argue for their answers give us an important insight
into people’s ways of thinking about our questions. Still, at the same time, hearing their vari-
ant understandings and discussions made comparison rather more dubious (cf. Nyström Höög
2005a, Thøgersen 2005b, 2006).
Rather than attempting to discard all the problematic data, we have tried to analyze them
on their own terms. That is, first we analyzed the quantitative data as if they were truly com-
parable. Next, we analyzed the qualitative data as if they were truly the informants’ ‘own’ ar-
guments about their answers (i.e., not as having been elicited by us). Thirdly, we looked at
how one kind of data could increase our understanding of the other kind.
5. Quantifying the responses
For our analysis of the ideology of ‘the Nordic’ today, we have for this study chosen three
questions from the interviews questionnaire that were not posed in the opinion poll survey.
These three were presented to the informants in the form of statements, whereupon the infor-
mants were asked whether they agree or not with the proposition in that statement. In transla-
tion, the three statements are as follows (with original questionnaire numbering):
3.5. Inter-Nordic communication should be conducted in Norwegian, Danish or Swedish.
3.6. It is quite acceptable and merely an advantage to conduct inter-Nordic communication
in English.
3.4. It would be an advantage if all people in the world spoke English as an international
language.
The questions about the choice of language in inter-Nordic communication, Scandinavian or
English, deal most obviously with the ideology of the Nordic and the maintenance of a Nordic
language community; theoretically, they are posed as opposites so that being positive towards
one of the two questions should be complemented with a negative view towards the other.
The question about English as a ‘global’ language (# 3.4) is included primarily as a back-up
for this study, in order for us to be able to say something about the general ‘linguistic globali-
zation’ of the individual speech communities as well as about the informants’ overall attitude
towards English as a language of wider communication. Mean scores (where 1 = ‘I do not
agree’ and 5 = ‘complete agreement’) on the questions and comparative ranks of the opinions
in the seven language communities are given in table 1. The overall differences are highly sta-
tistically significant, computed with the Kruskal-Wallis test on mean ranks. The ranking of
the societies, however, is based on differences in mean scores, not on statistical significance.
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