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

of quantitative questionnaires has been my way of gathering data. I have tried to argue how a
quantitative approach runs the risk of assembling the wrong answers. Not because a quantita-
tive approach does not obtain interesting data, but because a quantitative approach holds pre-
cious little knowledge about what the data really are about. On the one hand, informants may
answer completely different questions from the ones the researcher thought he asked. On the
other, the issues the researcher find relevant and interesting may not be the issues that the in-
formants find relevant or interesting. Poignantly put, if we are sincere when we say that we
are interested in what the informant (as a representative of the lay person) thinks, let’s try not
to impose our interpretations on him, but rather see how he deals with the issues. My argu-
ment thus has both a destructive and a constructive side to it. It may seem a bold rejection of
more standard survey investigations, but it hopefully also brings new insights about peoples’
ways of making sense of language policy.
In the ‘constructive’ part of the paper, I have tried to sketch out some parts of the ‘rhe-
torical inventory’ that Danes draw upon when they are faced with questions about language
policy. Very few of the informants entered the interview with any stabile pre-constructed atti-
tude towards English – and even the ones that did often found themselves arguing both sides
of the issue, i.e. ‘changing their minds’ or ‘being ambivalent’. What they did enter the inter-
view with seems to be a set of common types about English, Danish, other languages and lan-
guage in general that they could draw upon, oppose with each other and rework when faced
with the task of composing an attitude. These form the presuppositions about languages, the
unquestioned ad hoc facts. I don’t mean to imply that the presuppositions cannot be called
into question, they can and they are. But when asked to form an opinion, these are the ready
made standard tools.
I sketched out two of these in relation to English. One is that English is universally
taken as the default foreign language of Danes, the language against which all other languages
are measured. The other is that English stands as a sign of modernity, internationalism, non-
conservatism etc. These presuppositions are some of the predetermined fix points that infor-
mants use when they negotiate their positive or negative attitudes. The presuppositions are not
directly linked with positivism or negativism, they are the starting points in arriving at positi-
vism or negativism. The positivism or negativism that the informant arrives at are influenced
by many other things than the knowledge of these common types. Not least how he wants to
present himself in the interview, which line of arguing he has maintained up until this point,
the questions immediately preceding this one etc.
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