Acceso usuarios
Mats Landqvist, Jennie Spetz
This article gives a presentation of the Swedish Language act and its application and reception by the public. Ten years have passed since its introduction, and for this reason a study was conducted by the Swedish Language council about what kind of issues were brought to governmental and local authorities by the public. By the collection of e-mail from the public presenting questions or comments in connection to the law this study could show two main topics. A little less than half of the e-mails were concerned about two of the national minority languages in Sweden, Finnish and Meänkieli, mostly from an educational perspective. Another main group of e-mails were concerned with the situation for sign language. The remaining minority languages and others issues related to the Language Act were hardly mentioned at all. Conclusions to be drawn are that strong lobbying groups do invoke legislation that can be associated with their aims, and that there may be other parts of the legislation that better cover the rights that the e-mailers wish to defend or that the Language act is still unknown as to its content.
