The official Faroese language policy is characterized by linguistic purism. Since the middle of the 19. Century when the Faroese orthography was created, lexical purism has been the guiding star. During 2002-04 I conducted a sociolinguistic investigation on attitudes to especially modern English import words in Faroese, using variables such as gender, age, education and income. My opinion survey shows that highly-educated people disagree more with the purism ideology than do people with less education. Another point is that younger people disagree more than the older. In language policy terms it is an interesting situation. Does it mean that the purism will lose its strength in the future? Thøgersen states it in this way: “If the elites in these countries [i.e. Norway and the Faroes] do not support a purist policy, or, stated differently if purist discourse is associated with low status, it would be hard to imagine a long-term future for it”.
Keywords: linguistics, faroes
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