Negotiating Identity : A sociolinguistic analysis of adult English speaking immigrants in Sweden

Sammanfattning: Due to increased transnational migration and globalisation, English has come to have a high status in Sweden, and is used in daily communication. The purpose of this research is to investigate how immigrants with English as their first language, negotiate their identity in Sweden, how they construct the need to (not) speak Swedish, and, finally, how their linguistic trajectories inform us about their linguistic ideologies and reported practices. Identity, constantly performed on the border between the self and the other, is greatly dependent on the language. Recent research in the field has focused mainly on immigrants moving to English speaking countries, while migrants with English as their first language have been somewhat neglected. This study investigates identity negotiation based on linguistic repertoire, Spracherleben, and linguistic ideologies, based on data collected through interviews. The results indicate that the fact that all informants prefer to, and mostly do use English, has a meaning beyond the language. It is namely in the language choice itself that the participants negotiate and demonstrate their identity. Language, therefore, is not the main issue the informants find problematic. Instead, it is the sense of alienation and the inability to convey their message in the way they feel would best represent who they are.