The questionnaire

The questionnaire consisted of three parts. The first part contained background questions about the participants and questions about the participants’ use of English in their leisure time and everyday life. More specifically, there were four questions regarding how often the participants listen, speak, read and write English in various situations. The second part of the questionnaire contained questions regarding how often Finnish and English are used together in the respondents’ own speech and writing, and what possible reasons they think there could be for such language use. The last part addressed the question of how close to or far from Finnish the English elements in the given examples were according to the participants’ opinion. After every text passage example there was also a question concerning possible reasons for using the particular item in the situation. The examples were collected from discussion forums in two websites and they came from naturally occurring texts. Thus, unlike often in similar studies, the examples were not invented. The use of authentic texts served the idea of examining the participants’ reactions to code-switching in a more reliable way. Next I will discuss the questionnaire design and the first two parts in more detail, that is, the background information part and the part with questions about frequency of and reasons to language mixing.

The background part entailed questions about the respondents’ gender, age and mother tongue. The questions regarding the participants’ use of English in their leisure time and everyday life were the following: “In your leisure time, do you listen to…”, “In your leisure time, do you read English…”, “In your leisure time, do you write in English…” and “In your leisure time, do you speak English…”. These were followed by different situations where English is often present and can be used (see Appendix 1). The respondents were asked to choose how often they listen to, read, write and speak English in the given

situations, and the choices were: Almost daily, approximately weekly, approximately monthly, even less frequently and never. This question and these given choices (the situationswhere English is often present and the given choices as frequency of use) were the same as in the questionnaire by Leppänen et al. (2011), except for one point; the choice Instant messages (e.g. MSN Messenger, other instant messaging programs) was added in the question “In your leisure time, do you write in English…”. Using instant messaging programs is quite common among young people, which is why the choice was added in the list.

The second part of the questionnaire comprised of two questions. The first one goes as follows: “How often do you mix your mother tongue with English when you…”. The respondents’ were expected to answer this question regarding speaking and writing separately. The alternatives for both speaking and writing were again almost daily, approximately weekly, approximately monthly, even less frequently and never. This question was taken from the questionnaire used by Leppänen et al. (2011) as it is. The second question was “Why do you mix your mother tongue with English when you speak or write?” Again, the respondents were to answer this question regarding speaking and writing separately and the alternatives were:

a) I will not be understood otherwise

b) Finding another suitable expression is difficult c) I use professional or specialist terminology d) The people I interact with do the same e) It is a good way to create an effect

f) It is a good way to stylize one’s speech or writing g) I do not even notice that I am doing it

h) some other reason, what?____________________

Here the respondents were asked to tick the points that they felt suited them, or alternatively leave the points blank, if they felt they did not apply to them. The word mix was used in the questionnaire when referring to code-switching,

merely in order to make the questionnaire understandable for the respondents;

the study is not theoretically based on code-mixing. Also these alternatives were originally adopted from the survey by Leppänen et al. (2011), except for one point. The choice It is a good way to stylize one’s speech or writing was added in the list. The possible problems brought by the similarity between this choice and the previous alternative, It is a good way to create an effect, were pondered for a long time. Therefore, the possibility of leaving the previous one out was considered but in the end they were both included in the questionnaire. The grounds for this is that the latter choice in a sense complements the first one, as they are both connected to the way English has been found to be used alongside Finnish; as for example Jørgensen (2001:126) found, stylizing speech can be considered to be a part of young people’s identity construction and their aims at identifying with a group.

The third part consisted of questions regarding the foreignness of the elements in the given examples, which were short passages of text taken from discussion forums. There were altogether 12 short passages of which a part was bolded.

The respondents were asked to answer questions regarding the bolded parts, which will be explained in more detail in chapter 4.3.3. The respondents were to answer whether they think the bolded part of the text was closest to Finnish, English or something in the middle. A 5-point semantic differential scale was used here, and the respondents were to mark their answer with a cross in the most suitable place in the scale. The question and the scale were as follows:

Do you think the bolded part of the text is Finnish or English, or something in between?

Finnish __ __ __ __ __ English

The semantic differential scale was not adopted from the questionnaire by Leppänen et al. (2011), but originally designed for the present questionnaire instead. Another question regarding the text example concerned the possible reasons for mixing Finnish and English. The question was “Why do you think

the writer used an English word among Finnish in this particular sentence?”.

The given options were the same as above, in the question regarding the participants’ own reasons for code-switching (options a-h).

The questionnaire was pre-tested two times before the final version was written. The first version was given to 8 people who were asked to fill the form and give feedback on it thereafter. The second draft was written on the basis of this feedback and again given to 5 people (different than at the first time) who filled it, measured the time that the filling took and gave feedback on the questionnaire. The third and final version of the questionnaire was made on the basis of this feedback. I could not personally be present in the schools where the data was gathered, instead, I gave clear instructions about filling the questionnaire for the ones who gathered the data for me. The questionnaires were sent to me by mail and they were not read by anyone else than me at any point.

Since the main purpose of the study was to examine Finnish-English code-switching, the study was conducted in areas where Finnish is the main language, and therefore the assumption was that a vast majority of the respondents speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Thus, in order to ensure that the participants understood what they were asked to do and to understand the questions, the questionnaire was in Finnish. Since the data was gathered without me being present, there is quite much information and instructions for the respondents in between the different parts of the questionnaire.