“Språket för mig är en rikedom, kan du det, då är du rik!" : En kvalitativ studie av modersmålets betydelse för identitet och livskvalitet bland personer från Iran inom äldreomsorgen

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate how language difficulties in elderly care can affect the identity and quality of life of older Iranians. Intention is to increase knowledge about the importance of the native language for people in elderly care. Language barriers were previously researched mostly in nursing homes in the context of dementia, primaly relying on observations or text analysis and shows the importance of mother tongue use in late life. Previous research was realized with methods that do not include the elderly perspective. Therefore, we chose a qualitative interview as appropriate to investigate the problem from the perspective of the elderly. The results show a strong connection between identity, quality of life and language. The quality of life is directly affected by language, and the language influence on identity is indirect and dependable on other internal and external factors. In other words, it is not possible to examine the individual's language's impact on quality of life without the inclusion of the individual's identity as the most important factor. The findings also point to the need for further research about identity and quality of life of older people in relation to absence of Swedish language.