»Önskar att jag hade fått hjälp att lära min son finska.»* Finskans öden i skenet av 2000-talets utbildningsoch minoritetspolitiska utveckling i Sverige

Abstract

This article aims to establish the ways in which different aspects of the Swedish national minority language policy have facilitated or hindered the fulfilling of the aims to revitalize these languages. Finnish is used as a test case, and we apply a two-step approach to analyzing the development of its use during the 2000s: we adapt the COD model (Capacity, Opportunity, Desire), proposed by Grin in the early 1990s, and apply it at three societal levels: macro, meso and micro. The macro level covers national policies, laws and other regulations. The meso level is represented by the adoption and implementation of these locally. The micro level consists of linguistic biographies by informants of a bilingual project started in 1991, and revisited in 2013. Education in or of Finnish as an example of language policy is central to the study, although other fields are considered. Our analysis shows that policies established at the national level recur in different forms at the meso and micro levels. Although there is an overlap between these societal levels, there is a discrepancy between legislation and practice. The dimension of capacity in Finnish seems to account for much of the development in language use, compared to opportunity and desire. The COD model, in combination with its multilevel adaptation, is a functional, analytic option for the study of language policy decisions and their effect on language use patterns. It therefore could also be adapted to the other national minority languages of Sweden.