Language Attitudes

Question 1

What are the 3 components of language attitudes?

Answer 1

cognitive (beliefs and stereotypes)
affective (evaluations)
behavioural

Question 2

What is an attitude?

Answer 2

a disposition to react un/favourably to a class of objects
a mental construct

Question 3

How can attitudes be explored?

Answer 3

in/direct approaches

ex/implicit measures

Question 4

Explain a Language Attitude experiment

Answer 4

Labov’s subjective reaction tests
they listened to ‘r’ less/full speech extracts and guessed their jobs (ranked by prestige)
rated ‘r’ less one or 2 ranks lower - stereotyped reaction evoked

Question 5

Explain a matched guise technique

Answer 5

Giles’
same speaker, same passage, different accents
consistently, RP scores higher for intelligence and regional accent guises score higher for friendliness and honesty

Question 6

What is perceptual dialectology?

Answer 6

perception of geog distribution of lang variation

-how we perceive our space can influence our behaviour

Question 7

What are the pros and cons of perceptual dialectology?

Answer 7

pros: tells us more about language attitudes
cons: too testing of listener’s geog knowledge?

Question 8

Explain the draw a map task

Answer 8

informants are asked to construct a hand drawn map of where they think dialect boundaries exist

Question 9

Explain a perceptual dialectology experiment

Answer 9

Montgomery, investigate N/S divide in UK
participants asked to divide UK into linguistic N/S and then place speaker on maps on 6 given cities corresponding to where they think they’re from

Question 10

Explain the results of a perceptual dialectology experiment

Answer 10

cultural salience: Manc/Geordie highly recognised
general awareness: reliant on sociocultural factors not ling
proximity: Crewe speakers shifted boundary to include them, ‘lower’ Northerner’s placed boundary further south to include

Question 11

What is a problem with matched guised techniques?

Answer 11

authenticity of the accents

reading language = unnatural

Question 12

What is a problem with perceptual dialectology techniques?

Answer 12

geographical knowledge needed

Question 13

Explain the other-accents effect

Answer 13

Stevenage et al.

English/Scottish listeners had greater accuracy for own accent

Question 14

Explain forced categorisation studies

Answer 14

listeners are given categories to assign speakers to, but this needs a reliance on geog knowledge

Question 15

Explain Clopper and Pisoni’s forced categorisation study

Answer 15

only 30% accuracy when dividing speakers into 6 dialects
broader perceptual categories=more reliable
homebodies=always lived in Indiana
army brats = lived in 3+ US states
-ABs performed better

Question 16

Explain Clopper and Pisoni’s free classification study?

Answer 16

removes lack of geog knowledge
average 10 groups created
-perception of finer distinctions
-mobile listener’s created more than non-mobile