Everyday Language Practices and the Interplay of Ideologies, Investment and Identities – Language Use and Dispositions among Young Adolescents in Multilingual Urban Settings in Sweden

Sammanfattning: Sweden is a multilingual country, and an increasing number of children and adolescents grow up using one or more languages in additions to Swedish. This has purred an interest in multilingual practices and the educational needs of minority language children and youths. While this group of children and adolescents has increased, the traditional monolingual language practices and ideologies of the education system has continued to dominate, creating a linguistic diverge between home and school. The systematic knowledge about the out-of-school language practices and encounters among this group of students is limited, particularly with regards to the interrelationship between language practices, ideologies, and identity constructions. This thesis explores the reported out-of-school language practices and ideological positions among young adolescents in relation to language ideologies, investment, and identities. The study was conducted between 2019–2021 with young adolescents (aged 11–14) attending schools located in linguistically diverse urban neighborhoods in the three largest cities in Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Employing an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, the study included a questionnaire, language diaries and interviews.