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8 - Focus Groups

from Part 2 - Direct Methods of Attitude Elicitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2022

Ruth Kircher
Affiliation:
Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, and Fryske Akademy, Netherlands
Lena Zipp
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
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Summary

This chapter provides an overview of how to use focus groups in order to elicit language attitudes. Focus groups allow access to the collective discourse practices of a specified group of participants and can be used as a way of eliciting more natural and spontaneous responses. However, participants may feed off each other’s ideas rather than express their own original thoughts, and certain minority opinions may be downplayed, repressed, or withheld by the participants. Nevertheless, this method can be viewed as an attempt to analyse salient social representations in a communicative conversational situation and can yield otherwise unrevealed strands of research participants’ narratives. After an exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of using focus groups to investigate language attitudes, this chapter offers an overview of key practical issues of planning and research design. The analysis of the data resulting from focus group discussions is explored, particularly from a critical sociolinguistic perspective, involving mapping/categorisation of the data, tracing the circulation of people and resources over space and time, finding meaningful connections, and making valid claims. The chapter concludes with a case study of attitudes towards Breton and Yiddish in a variety of settings.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Focus Groups
  • Edited by Ruth Kircher, Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, and Fryske Akademy, Netherlands, Lena Zipp, Universität Zürich
  • Book: Research Methods in Language Attitudes
  • Online publication: 25 June 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108867788.011
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  • Focus Groups
  • Edited by Ruth Kircher, Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, and Fryske Akademy, Netherlands, Lena Zipp, Universität Zürich
  • Book: Research Methods in Language Attitudes
  • Online publication: 25 June 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108867788.011
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Focus Groups
  • Edited by Ruth Kircher, Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, and Fryske Akademy, Netherlands, Lena Zipp, Universität Zürich
  • Book: Research Methods in Language Attitudes
  • Online publication: 25 June 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108867788.011
Available formats
×