thesis on language attitudes

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1 Language Attitudes: Social Determinants and Consequences of Language Variation

Howard Giles is Professor at the Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tamara Rakić is a Lecturer at Lancaster University.

• Published: 03 March 2014
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This chapter surveys important approaches and findings related to language attitude studies. It begins by attending to the kinds of evaluations and images people are able to deduce from voices and attention is focused on judgments conveyed by standard and nonstandard features of accents, how they are developed, and their role in subjective comprehensibility. Thereafter, attitudes toward accents are addressed in a broader context (e.g., alongside verbal content, facial appearance, and the linguistic landscape), highlighting their importance to people’s social identity and emotional expression. Finally, a new model of language attitudes is introduced that attends to their complexity and role in ongoing discourse and information management. In addition and as a means of providing conceptual coherence to the literature (and particularly in the recent context of so many emergent models), nine organizing principles of language attitudes inspired by Dragojevic, Giles, and Watson’s (2013) complementary innovations are crafted.

As one of its New Year resolutions for 2012, the (British) Daily Mail (12/29/2011, p. 15) staunchly advocated: “Classic FM station bosses—fewer Northern accents, if possible, please, on your airwaves.” This suggests that, even in the twenty-first century and perhaps for good evolutionary effect ( Fincher & Thornhill, 2008 ), accents are still very socially significant. In fact, looking at the language attitudes literature, it is clear that of all the vocal cues investigated (e.g., pitch, lexical diversity), accents have received the most empirical attention—and it is these issues, as they relate to their determinants and consequences, that this chapter addresses. This is timely, to the extent that work in this tradition flourished in the 1970s and 1980s and was, arguably, among the most vibrant domains in the social psychology of language. Language attitudes research was rendered relatively silent in the 1990s through the early 2000s, yet is now experiencing a gratifying renaissance (e.g., Giles & Watson, 2013 ; Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010 a ; Rakić, Steffens, & Mummendey, 2011 a ).

Accent refers to a manner of pronunciation associated with particular group memberships, be it social, regional, ethnic, and so on ( Giles, 1973 ). That people have, or rather are attributed as having, a so-called “accent” has been a concern in everyday parlance, popular culture, and in many professional contexts for a very long time. Indeed, a standard accent is often referred to as “accent-free” or “accent-neutral” speech, and, conversely, speakers of many nonstandard and foreign varieties are often saddled with having “an accent” ( Lippi-Green, 1997 ). This could not, however, be further from the truth: everyone has their own way of pronouncing words and sentences and, therefore, possesses an individualized accent (or idiolect). But, more importantly, being attributed as having an “accent” or “no accent” has immediate consequences for evaluations of a speaker. The British actor Stephen Fry is reported as saying: “I sometimes wonder if Americans aren’t fooled by our accent into detecting the brilliance that may not really be there” ( Lane, 2007 ). Hence, it is not so much objective assessments as it is clusters of beliefs that govern social judgments of speech styles and their users.

The aim of this chapter is to survey important approaches and findings related to language attitude studies. We begin by attending to the kinds of evaluations and images people are able to deduce from voices, and we focus our attention on judgments conveyed by standard and nonstandard features of accents, how they are developed, and their role in subjective comprehensibility. Thereafter, we will address attitudes toward accents in a broader context (e.g., alongside verbal content, facial appearance, and the linguistic landscape), highlighting their importance to people’s social identity and emotional expression. Finally, we introduce a new model of language attitudes that attends to their complexity and role in ongoing discourse and information management. In the conclusion, and as a means of providing conceptual coherence to the literature, and particularly in the recent context of so many emergent models (e.g., Dovidio & Gluszek, 2012 ; Giles & Marlow, 2012 ), we end with nine organizing principles of language attitudes inspired by Dragojevic, Giles, and Watson’s (2013) complementary innovations in this regard.

Socially Diagnostic Language Cues for Social Evaluation

People not only use language to communicate with others but also to make sense of them, personally and socially. For instance, almost immediately on hearing someone start to speak (see Williams, 1976 ), we are able to tell many things about that person. Just from their voice, we can gain information about a speaker’s gender, ethnicity, emotional state, and even physical size (e.g., Honorof & Whalen, 2010 ; Lass, Hughes, Bowyer, Waters, & Bourne, 1976 ). Listeners can also deduce additional attributes from speech, such as personality traits (e.g., Allport & Cantril, 1934 ; Scherer, 1979 ) and, indeed, the word personality comes from Latin per (through) and sonare (to sound) meaning literally “to sound through.”

As McGlone and Giles (2011) commented in their own review of language attitudes research, “speakers’ identities are encoded in their voices. And listeners hearing their speech can, without training, do a remarkable job of decoding this identifying information” (p. 218). In this vein, there is some evidence that people seem to be fairly good at judging certain characteristics from voice; for instance, the correlation between judged and actual socioeconomic status (SES; as measured by the Index of Status Characteristics) was found to be +0.80 ( Ellis, 1967 ). However, at other times, as for example with age, people can be far from accurate in their estimates ( Mulac & Giles, 1996 ).

In the language attitudes literature, many characteristics of speech and language production have been examined (e.g., powerful/powerless speech, lexical diversity, and speech rate). Because details concerning speech variation will be covered elsewhere in this volume (see Chapter 5 ), we will focus our analysis of language attitudes to accented speech.

The Power of Accents

As witnessed, another’s voice affords listeners an array of judgmental options, with speakers themselves possessing language attitude schemas that can mediate how they self-present in different situations with various people (see Giles & Street, 1985 ). Across studies, different methodologies have been adopted. Whereas some (e.g., Grondelaers, van Hout, & Steegs, 2010 ) had genuine speakers of language varieties using free speech as objects of evaluation, much research in the language attitudes tradition has used Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fillenbaum’s (1960) matched-guise technique (MGT; see also, Lambert, 1967 ; and for other elicitation procedures, see Ryan, Giles, & Hewstone, 1988 ). Studies employing this procedure present listeners with audio recordings of purportedly neutral passages of prose (see Giles & Coupland, 1991 ) read by bilingual or bidialectal individuals who can authentically adopt various guises of the language varieties under investigation. By using the same speaker to render these guises, other extraneous vocal variables, such as speech rate, that vary naturally between speakers, are controlled. Researchers are thereby able to attribute response differences primarily to the guises being contrasted. The pros and cons of different techniques continue to be aired and debated over the decades (e.g., Garrett, 2010 ) yet, nevertheless, all methods elicit somewhat the same patterns of social evaluation ( Sebastian, Ryan, Keogh, & Schmidt, 1979 ; see however, Ball, 1983 ).

Currently, we are witnessing a renewed interest in the methodology for assessing language attitudes. Pantos and Perkins (2013) , for example, have showed that whereas people tend to show a pro-foreign accent bias in explicit evaluation of voices, this effect not only disappears but is reversed (in favor of an American accent) when using an audio implicit association test of language attitudes. In similar vein, Schoel et al. (2013) developed a new scale for the assessment of language attitudes, making a clear distinction between dimensions of speaker evaluation (i.e., attitudes toward speakers; see Zahn & Hopper, 1985 ) on the one hand and those associated with the language spoken (such as sound and structure) on the other. Further work in this genre should allow for the unpacking of even clearer judgmental distinctions between speakers and the speech styles they adopt. In what follows, we turn our attention to the ways in which accent has been explored in the language attitudes literature and begin by discussing the role of age.

Development Matters

The fact that we rely so much on voice and language when it comes to making sense of others should not be very surprising if we consider that hearing is the first fully developed and used sense in newborns ( Crystal, 2005 ; Mehler, Bertoncini, Barrière, & Jassik-Gerschenfeld, 1978 ). Indeed, Nazzi, Juscyk, and Johnson (2000) observed that American children as young as 5 months are already sensitive to dialectical variations (see also Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007 ). Such children seem already to have developed an English reference sound system that helps them immediately notice and react if different accents (e.g., Italian or Spanish) are presented alongside their native language variety. They are further able to differentiate Japanese from Italian even without English comparisons, presumably because the former has such a very different rhythmic sound system. It seems that language-sound connections made during the native language learning process continue to play a central role throughout our communication life. This poses an obstacle to overcome when it comes to second-language learning at a later point in life, especially when accents are, purportedly anyway, much more difficult to change ( Lippi-Green, 1997 ).

Hence, by the age of 5, accents can be as potent in children’s social appraisals as gender or skin color. In this sense, studies show that children prefer friends from the same accent group, regardless of their race ( Kinzler, Shutts, Dejesus, & Spelke, 2009 ), and they also attribute greater trust to native language speakers ( Kinzler, Corriveau, & Harris, 2011 ). Moreover, these preferences are not driven by impaired comprehension of nonnative accents but rather by a simple preference for one’s own accent. Consequently, Kinzler, Shutts, and Correll (2010) argue that children have a natural tendency to use language—and even accent—as a meaningful social mechanism to organize the social world around them (for an evolutionary perspective on this process, see Reid et al., 2012 ).

Additionally, studies with children are important for understanding how language attitudes are learned and developed (for a socialization model of language attitudes, see Bradac & Giles, 1991 ). In a French study by Girard, Floccia, and Goslin (2008) , 5- and 6-year-old children were very good at differentiating between-language variation (i.e., native- versus foreign-accented speech), although they seemed not to notice within-language differences (i.e., northern- and southern-accented French). Several explanations may account for this phenomenon. First, a foreign accent may vary more from non-foreign varieties than different regional varieties vary from one another. Second, at that age, children start to develop national identities; hence, it may be more relevant to distinguish “us” versus “them” varieties than to distinguish forms within one’s own language; for a further discussion of this process, see work on the so-called reference framing effect later in this chapter. This effect diminishes with further development: whereas knowledge of regional differentiation increases, the differentiation between native and foreign remains highly persistent throughout the lifetime.

In contrast, older children (aged 7–10 years) were able to differentiate and evaluate different varieties of Dutch ( van Bezooijen, 1994 ), and the results indicated a preference for standard Dutch over regional varieties. Overall, language attitudes seem to be transmitted automatically through socialization, with children demonstrating different patterns of evaluation of nonstandard varieties depending on their age (e.g., Giles, Harrison, Creber, Smith, & Freeman, 1983 ). Welsh children at the age of 7 clearly prefer their own accent and react negatively toward received pronunciation (RP), although, by the age of 10, they show an evaluative pattern similar to adults by evaluating the British standard most favorably ( Price, Fluck, & Giles, 1983 ).

Issues of Standardization and Nonstandardization

During the history of their development, languages usually undergo a process of so-called standardization (for a framework in which to locate language varieties by this and other means, see Dragojevic et al., 2013 ; Ryan, Giles, and Sebastian, 1982 ), meaning that, from many different varieties of the same language (e.g., different dialects), one unique way of defining the grammar, spelling, and pronunciation is established. This variety is put on a societal pedestal and is typically spoken by culturally and economically powerful elites. This standard variety is then promoted through the education system as well as through the media and, in this way, standard language speakers gain high prestige and status (for the relationship between language ideologies and language attitudes, see Dragojevic et al., 2013 ). Intriguingly, the degree of standardization of a given language has been found to correlate with a country’s economic development ( Jones, 1973 ), although operationalizing a standard language is not without its complexities (see Edwards & Jacobsen, 1987 ; Kristiansen, 2001 ). Furthermore, a standard variety’s prestige, aesthetics, and associations with correctness are actually more context- and norm-dependent than inherently ascribed as will be evident from what follows.

The notion of standard language seems to be very natural in the minds of people, and yet it is actually an artificial construct, being a consequence often referred to as the myth of a standard language ( Lippi-Green, 1997 ). Examples of standard varieties would be RP (commonly referred to as “the Queen’s or BBC English”), Parisian French, and Castilian Spanish, whereas nonstandard speakers would be those who speak more regional or nonnative varieties of these languages ( Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010 b ; see also Tsurutani, 2012 ). Generally, standard language varieties grant people access to political, economic, and educational forums and opportunities, whereas speakers of nonstandard language varieties are faced with stigmatization ( Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010 a ); this pattern is even more pronounced for nonnative than for other nonstandard accented speakers (i.e., regional accent speakers). Additionally, nonnative accented speakers have reported lower feelings of belonging in the United States, and this effect can be mediated by perceived problems in communication ( Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010 b ). The fact that a standard accent is not in any sense a given is evident from a recent study in the Netherlands that focused on different regional varieties of standard Dutch ( Grondelaers et al., 2010 ). Interestingly here, regional influences on the standard language have started to gain more social acceptance as legitimate variations of this speech variety.

The notion of standard language or accent is then somewhat problematic, but even more so is the notion of “no-accent” or “speech without an accent” referred to at the outset of this chapter. In many instances of everyday life, nonstandard accented speakers are those who are accused of having “an accent.” Consequently, ever-growing numbers of courses and workshops are offered with the promise of helping nonstandard speakers lose their accent. Whereas at first blush there might not seem to be anything terribly wrong with this, it sidesteps how relative and highly context-dependent this notion is. For instance, imagine someone speaking standard American in California. This person would probably be considered as someone without an accent as compared to someone with a London accent. Once in the UK, however, these inferences would be inverted.

Additionally, the exposure and expertise associated with a given accent determines how well different within-language variations can be perceived. Quite recently, an American journalist reporting on the televised 2011 Grammy Awards featured Adele, a singer who was regularly on stage accepting awards that year. He wrote: “Adele’s clean sweep lent the night a classy air…hey, anything sounds suave in a British accent” ( Wappler, 2012 ). In this sense, the singer’s accent was deemed prestigious because it was “British.” In the UK, however, her Cockney accent would not be evaluated so kindly (see Coupland & Bishop, 2007 ).

Generally, it can be concluded that speakers of nonstandard language varieties—and especially those with broader accents ( Gluszek, Newheiser, & Dovidio, 2011 ; Tsurutani, 2012 )—are perceived across many diverse international settings (see Giles & Watson, 2013 ) to be at a social disadvantage vis-à-vis their standard counterparts, particularly in status-related contexts such as classroom settings or job interviews. Indeed, studies have shown that different nonstandard varieties can be located hierarchically on aesthetic and prestige dimensions (e.g., Giles, 1970 ). Exemplars of such nonstandard forms in the United States would be Appalachian ( Luhmann, 1990 ) and Southern ( Heaton & Nygaard, 2011 ; Preston, 1999 ), as well as African-American vernacular English variants (for a discussion of the complexity of findings relating to the latter, see Ray, 2009 ). More specifically, nonstandard speakers can be caricatured as downgraded relative to standard accented speakers on competence (e.g., intelligence, ambition, and confidence) as well as dynamism traits (e.g., lively, enthusiastic, and talkative); suitability for employment in high-status jobs ( Rakić et al., 2011 a ); effectiveness as teachers ( Williams, 1976 ); guilt when under suspicion of committing a crime (e.g., Dixon, Mahoney, & Cocks, 2002 ); and the perceived quality of the message content (see Guy, 1988 ; Riches & Foddy, 1989 ). As indicated earlier, it would seem that these attitudes derive from complex schemas about relationships among language, dialect, ethnicity, and social class (for a French case, see Stewart, 2012 ), and ones, again, that can be acquired very early in life (e.g., Floccia, Butler, Girard, & Goslin, 2009 ).

Gluszek and Hansen (2013) also discuss, in ways not usually manifest in the literature, the relationship between language attitudes and the media. In particular, they look at how different accents can be strategically adopted in the movies and on TV and radio to evoke particular social images—as in the case of heroes and villains; the former often being represented by standard and the latter by nonstandard accents (see Lippi-Green, 1997 , for representations of native/nonnative accents in Disney movies over 50 years). Indeed, the ways in which language varieties, such as languages, dialects, and accents, can be associated with distinctive songs, poetry, and other literary forms is a fascinating arena worthy of systematic analysis.

Language Attitudes and Comprehensibility

Different interpretations have been proposed to explain why nonstandard accented speakers are evaluated less favorably than standard accented speakers. Some, for us rather provocatively, have argued that nonnative speakers are downgraded not so much because of social prejudice or preexisting stereotypes but, rather, due to the increased cognitive load experienced by listeners trying to understand nonstandard accented messages (e.g., Dovidio & Gluszek, 2012 ). Whereas this might play a relevant role in a task where one has to quickly discriminate a short ambiguous statement as true or not (e.g., Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010 ), it is less likely that the same would apply in real-life encounters in which other information about a speaker might be present and when speech samples are longer, thereby offering more time to become accustomed to that language variety. Interestingly, it is this idea of “incomprehensibility” that is a central argument of standard language ideology (see Dragojevic et al., 2013 ); the justification and rationalization for why nonstandard (and nonnative) speakers are somehow “less.”

Relatedly, Dovidio and Gluszek (e.g., 2012) account for the discrimination of nonstandard speakers as a result of (nonstandard) accent and nonverbal behavior usage that cause disfluency and increase intergroup biases in listeners. For these scholars, it seems that (nonstandard) accent and nonverbal behavior facilitate intergroup bias because they increase the strength of intergroup boundaries and in such a way contribute to disfluent interactions. Even though this model partially acknowledges the biased perception of others, at the same time, it relies on the notion that there is something essentially disfluent in nonstandard (i.e., nonnative) speakers that causes lower comprehension. In our opinion, such a view is rather problematic for at least two reasons.

First, research suggests that although unfamiliar accents may initially disrupt processing fluency, adaptation and normalization quickly follow, and participants show a full recovery in processing speed ( Floccia, Goslin, Girard, & Konopczynski, 2006 ), sometimes after exposure to only 2–4 sentences ( Clarke & Garrett, 2004 ). Second, not only does it assume that a listener is somewhat of an objective receiver of a message, but it also neglects other aspects that are known to influence our perceptions, such as social identities and emotions aroused. In this regard, there are studies showing how listeners’ prejudice levels mediate the perception of accent (strength) and overall evaluation of de facto standard speakers (e.g., Rubin, 1992 ; Rubin & Smith, 1990 ). Here, the only cue for ethnicity of speakers was in their face, which indicated East-Asian origins, whereas all speakers spoke exclusively with a standard American accent. Remarkably, listeners with high levels of prejudice reported that speakers (accompanied with an East-Asian face) were very hard to understand, reportedly due to their (heavy) accents. Hence for those high in prejudice, certain foreigners were “heard” to have a “problematic” accent that actually was not present (see Lindemann, 2002 ; Munro & Derwing, 1995 ). Relatedly, Cairns and Duriez (1976) found that Catholic children performed much poorer than Protestant children on a recall test after being given a text delivered in RP (the British standard accent variety) than in a Dublin accent. Tellingly in terms of political identity, the former reported to be living in Ireland, whereas their Protestant counterparts reported living in Northern Ireland. Interestingly, the same deficit in recall was observed with Protestant children, but only after exposure to a Dublin-accented passage of prose. Essentially, these decreases in comprehension were not due to any lack of understanding because different accented forms were equally well understood by both sets of listeners.

The Value of Nonstandard Accents

On traits of social attractiveness and benevolence, such as friendliness, generosity, and sincerity, nonstandard speakers have been upgraded, albeit not always consistently (e.g., Dailey, Giles, & Jansma, 2005 ; for a meta-analysis, see Fuertes, Gottdiener, Martin, Gilbert, & Giles, 2012 ). Indeed, the values attached to a (foreign) British accent in the United States, and, in contrast, an American variety in Australia, are illustrative cases in point ( Bayard, Weatherall, Gallois, & Pittam, 2001 ; Stewart, Ryan, & Giles, 1985 ). Additionally, male nonstandard speakers have been perceived as more masculine and considered more skilled at manual labor tasks ( Giles, Henwood, Coupland, & Harriman, 1992 ). In this sense, when ingroup identity and loyalty are salient, nonstandard accents can have covert prestige for some of its speakers ( Marlow & Giles, 2008 ; Ryan, 1979 ). This effect is in line with Cuddy, Fiske, and Glick’s (2008) stereotype content model that shows how stigmatized groups (e.g., elderly folk) compensate their lack of attributed competence by elevated attributions of warmth. However, work in this tradition has, to date, focused on ratings of the conceptual labels of different social groups (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002 ) and not invoked vocal characteristic of them. A question then arises (see Ryan, 1979 ) as to why nonstandard language varieties persist. A plausible answer to that question is provided by the role that language plays for social identity. Because Chapter 3 is fully dedicated to the topic of language and identity, we will cover it only briefly here.

People are cognitively complex, and they simultaneously have (or are attributed as having) different social identities to call on, with (positive) social identities being crucial for their well-being. Social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979 ) addresses such identity issues and provides a fruitful theoretical frame for understanding language attitudes, both with respect to the speaker and the listener (see Ryan, Hewstone, & Giles, 1984 ). Ethnolinguistic identity theory (e.g., Giles & Johnson, 1981 )—a language-oriented theory drawing on SIT and communication accommodation theory—underscores the language–identity bond. According to this model, language performs central psychological functions of enhancing a speaker’s positive social identity, especially with respect to ethnicity. Therefore, it is not surprising that the language variety used by others is a very powerful cue in determining who is a member of one’s in- or outgroup ( Yzerbyt, Leyens, & Bellour, 1995 ; see also Reid et al., 2012 ). Regarding this last example, participants showed a strong overexclusion effect (i.e., more promptly excluded those speakers with a not clearly identifiable accent) when asked to identify other ingroup members. Consequently, encounters might be considered more in intergroup terms when the two parties do not acknowledge each other as individuals but as members of (different) social groups (see Cargile & Giles, 1997 ; for further development of this in terms of so-called interpersonal communication, see Dragojevic & Giles, 2014 ).

Thus, whereas it might be objectively difficult to stop speaking with a nonstandard (or nonnative) accent, from a sociopsychological point of view, it might actually be counterproductive even to try because accent constitutes a fundamental part of an individual’s social identity and cultural heritage. Indeed, positive social identities are essential for ensuring positive self-esteem and well-being. As previously established, nonstandard (especially immigrant) accented speakers can, over time, feel less of a sense of belonging to their host society and, as a result, experience alienation and a depleted ingroup image. However, this could be mediated and alleviated by identification with one’s own ingroup of nonstandard accent speakers. This was supported for a group of African Americans who reported being recipients of discrimination in ways that negatively influenced their well-being but, at the same time, promoted a stronger identification with the ingroup which, in turn, assisted in restoring a positive well-being ( Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999 ; see also Wright & Bougie, 2007 ).

Language Attitudes: Self-Categorization and Frames of Reference

As witnessed in the foregoing section, language attitudes are not fixed cognitive structures. Language attitude shifts have most often been studied as a function of external factors, such as changes in intergroup relations and shifts in government language policies (e.g., Woolard & Gahg, 1990 ). For example, Genesee and Holobow (1989) examined how Canadians’ language attitudes toward French and English had changed in the years following 1977 legislation that made French the official language of Quebec province. They found that, compared to 30 years earlier (see Lambert et al., 1960 ), French Canadians were less likely to upgrade English speakers on solidarity traits, although they continued to attribute them with more status relative to French speakers. However, language attitudes may also change more dynamically as a function of the social categorization process itself.

Specifically, language cues (such as accents) can index multiple identities at different levels of abstraction. For example, an American Southern English (ASE) accent indexes a regional identity (e.g., Southerner) and a national identity (e.g., American). As a result, to the extent that speakers and listeners share some of these identities (e.g., Californians and ASE speakers share a national identity, but have different regional identities), the same language cue can be used to categorize a speaker as an outgroup member or as an ingroup member, depending on the level of categorization salient to listeners.

These different levels of categorization are likely to become salient to listeners at various times, as manifest in self-categorization theory (SCT; Hogg & Reid, 2006 ; Turner et al., 1987 ). In other words, social categorization is a subjective process that depends on the contrasts that are perceptually most obvious and meaningful in a given social context or frame of reference. In turn, these different categorizations are likely to influence listeners’ language attitudes toward the speaker. Relatedly, SIT posits that a part of people’s self-concept derives from their social group membership (i.e., social identities). As a result, people strive to maintain a positive social identity in an effort to enhance their self-esteem. One way people can establish positive social identities is through favorable comparisons of their ingroup against relevant outgroups. This results in ingroup favoritism, or the tendency of people to show a preference and affinity for members of their own group over members of other groups (see Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis, 2002 ). In other words, listeners are likely to have more favorable language attitudes toward speakers when they categorize them as ingroup versus outgroup members, and these categorizations are likely to change as a function of the frame of reference in which they occur.

Consistent with this rationale, Abrams and Hogg (1987) found that listener judges in Dundee, Scotland, evaluated speakers with a Glasgow accent (a local Scottish variety) less favorably in terms of status and solidarity when they were compared to speakers with a Dundee accent than when they were compared to speakers with an RP accent (i.e., standard British English). The authors argued that the different comparison groups (i.e., Dundee or RP accents) provided Dundee listeners with different frames of reference and, thus, engendered them to categorize the Glasgow-accented speakers differently. Specifically, they argued that the first situation made a local identity (i.e., Dundee vs. Glasgow) salient in which Glasgow speakers constituted the outgroup. In contrast, the second situation made a regional identity (i.e., Scotland vs. England)—or perhaps national ( McIntosh, Sim, & Robertson, 2004 ) identity—salient in which Glasgow speakers now constituted the ingroup (i.e., Scots) and RP speakers the outgroup (i.e., English). In other words, the more favorable language attitudes toward Glasgow speakers in the latter situation reflected ingroup favoritism.

Drawing on this paradigm and using the MGT, Dragojevic and Giles (2013) presented Californian listener-judges with moderate and broad American Southern English accented guises. In different conditions, these were paired either with a Californian-accented (interregional frame of reference) or Punjabi-accented English speaker (international frame of reference). Listeners reported a stronger sense of connection with the Southern-accented guises, perceived their accents as more similar to their own, and evaluated them more favorably in terms of solidarity traits when the frame of reference was international (i.e., ingroup categorization) rather than interregional (i.e., outgroup categorization). These scholars labeled this phenomenon the “reference framing effect.”

Although who is in the evaluative frame can influence listeners’ perceptions of linguistic similarity–dissimilarity with other speakers (foreign and native), the degree of their personally felt vulnerability to disease can mediate this process. Working from a survival model of disease avoidance and utilizing voices from the International Dialects of English Archive ( http://web.ku.edu/~idea/ ), Reid et al. (2012) found that Californians who were high on a scale of pathogen disgust rated Floridian speakers more linguistically similar to themselves and more dissimilar from foreign-accented Sierra Leonan and Scottish speakers than those who were low on pathogen disgust. This effect was most pronounced when the Californians had just viewed disease-imposed images rather than other kinds of threatening projections (viz., gun primes). As these authors intriguingly wrote, “our findings provide evidence for a novel psychological process—cognition tracks perceived accent dissimilarity because accents are a cue to infection risk….Accents appear to be used as a cue to track these dynamic infection risks that are posed by outgroups” (p. 477).

Language Attitudes: Beyond the Accent

Voices are rarely present in a social vacuum but rather are embedded in the content of a message and the name and appearance of the speaker, as evident in matched-guise studies employing virtual visual characters (e.g., Nazarian, Khoosbabeh, & Dehghani, 2012 ), as well as the threat they might pose and the emotions they experience as evidenced in the Reid et al. (2012) study just described.

Generally, language attitudes studies keep the content of what is being conveyed constant. Heaton and Nygaard (2011) investigated the evaluation of Southern American and standard American accents as a function of two different types of messages, either typical (hunting and cooking) or untypical (medical and investment) of many Southerners’ discourse. Results indicated that both the accent and the content of the message had an influence on speakers’ evaluations. Both the Southern content of a message and the accent were rated lower in status (e.g., as less intelligent, competent, and educated) and higher in sociability attributes (e.g., generous, cheerful, and friendly) than were standard accent speakers or a non-Southern passage. Interestingly, the sociability attributes varied as a function of the content of the message only for standard accent speakers; those speaking about typical Southern topics were perceived as more sociable than those speaking about non-Southern topics.

In addition to accent, the very name of a speaker can be a potential clue to his or her ethnic origins. Purkiss, Perrewé, Gillespie, Mayes, and Ferris (2006) showed an interaction effect of both accent type and a person’s name on the evaluation of speakers, as well as on their hiring potential. More specifically, less favorable evaluations were attributed to those speakers who spoke with a Hispanic accent and had a Hispanic name, whereas the most positive evaluations were afforded standard accented speakers with a Hispanic name. Hence, whether the reason for such a positive evaluation of standard accent speakers with a Hispanic name was due to different evaluation standards for immigrants and natives (e.g., Biernat & Manis, 2007 ) or to a positive reaction to their presumed linguistic accommodations, these findings show that more secondary cues (e.g., name) can play an important role in the evaluation of speakers.

In everyday discourse, listeners have access to a speaker’s appearance and facial features. From research on person perception, it is known that physical attributes, just like vocal ones, influence the evaluation of a given person ( Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972 ). For instance, faces considered beautiful are associated with more positive personality traits, such as intelligence or likeability. However, Zuckerman, Miyake, and Hodgins (1991) found that a person’s face previously judged as attractive lost out to his or her being viewed as overall socially attractive when presented with what was perceived to be a less attractive voice ( Krahmer & Swerts, 2007 ; see also, Giessner, Ryan, Schubert, & van Quaquebeke, 2011 ).

Relatedly, and referring to their own empirical work regarding ethnic categorization, Rakić, Steffens, and Mummendey (2011 b ) found that “it was rather irrelevant for participants what targets looked like; it mainly mattered whether they were speaking with an accent or not. In this case it was almost as if participants became blind to the visual category information in the presence of more meaningful auditory category information” (p. 24). This does not mean, of course, that visual information about ethnicity is irrelevant. However, in some cases, ethnicity may be more “visible” and potent when presented through accent than by looks (for an evolutionary explanation of this, see Kinzler et al., 2010 ). Whether this would hold with ethnic groups other than those studied in the German context of Rakić et al. (2011 b ) is an empirical question, but there are related findings pointing to the possibility that it might be easier to ignore visual than vocal information (e.g., Kurzban, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2001 ).

Gratifyingly, systematic investigations of interactions between accent and other cues are on the upswing (e.g., Freeman & Ambady, 2011 a ; Ko, Judd, & Blair, 2006 ). Recently, theoretical advances have been made in accounting for people’s ability to manage complex social cues, and the so-called dynamic interactive theory of person construal ( Freeman & Ambady, 2011 b ) suggests that when trying to understand how people are perceived, one should account for the multiplicity of cues that need to be processed. Therefore, rather than trying to argue that face or voice is more important, we should strive to use both these (and other) cues to be able to understand the underlying processes leading to negative evaluation of, for example, nonstandard accented speakers.

In addition, the actual context as manifest in the prevailing linguistic landscape ( Bourhis & Landry, 1997 ) in which minority members live can influence their evaluations of standard and nonstandard speakers. Dailey et al. (2005) asked listener-judges to evaluate a radio speaker who spoke either in standard American or American with a Hispanic accent. Generally, results were a function of the perceived local linguistic climate (i.e., media, road signs) as being either more Spanish or more English. The perception of a predominately Spanish local climate resulted in less favorable evaluations of the standard speaker, whereas the opposite was the case for those embedded in a predominately English linguistic landscape. These findings reveal radio language as a potentially important component of the local vocal landscape (see Coluzzi, 2012 ), as well as open up the relevance of dimensions of the environment and social ecology for our wider understanding of how language attitude processes operate (see Giles, Katz, & Myers, 2006 ).

Finally, when a social group is linked to a negative stereotype with regard to language competencies (as in the case of nonstandard accented speakers), it might be suggested that these individuals will perform a given task below their actual abilities. The literature on stereotype threat can be fruitfully invoked here. Referring to skateboarders, older adults, and gang members as exemplars, Steele (1997) wrote that “where bad stereotypes about these groups apply, members of these groups can fear being reduced to that stereotype. And for those who identify with the domain to which the stereotype is relevant, this predicament can be self-threatening” (p. 614). One possible explanation for why stereotype threat negatively impacts, for example, intellectual performance is given by the fact that the immediate salience of a negative stereotype triggers a disruptive mental load that interferes with the actual task performance (e.g., Croizet et al., 2004 ). Because language is an essential part of a social identity, negative stereotypes about the given group, as well as personal relevance of the task at hand (i.e., wish to perform well), might actually hinder performance.

Even an otherwise insignificant reminder of own gender (by providing gender data before a test) is enough to trigger the negative stereotype about women’s performance in math, resulting in their lower performance. Not only math performance, but also language-related tasks can be hindered by stereotype threat. For instance, von Hippel, Wiryakusuma, Bowden, and Shochet (2011) showed that after being exposed to a negative stereotype with regard to women’s leadership qualities, women pretending to talk to a subordinate tended to be judged as more direct and instrumental in their communication (i.e., a “masculine” communication style). This, however, was not the case for women not being faced with this negative stereotype or those who, after the exposure, had to think about a value that was more important to them. These findings indicate that sometimes actively engaging in defiance of a given negative stereotype (i.e., lower leadership qualities of women) can result in counterproductive strategies, resulting in even poorer evaluations and, ironically, stereotype confirmation. One possible explanation could be offered by communication expectations and their violation ( Burgoon & LePoire, 1993 ); women are not expected to adopt a masculine communication style and are therefore penalized after unexpectedly doing so.

Relatedly, using a second language can be affected by negative stereotypes ( Paladino et al., 2009 ). In Italy, there is an official bilingual region where both Italian and German have the status of official languages. However, only a relatively small proportion of the population can be seen as truly bilingual, and a minority of native Italian speakers are negatively stereotyped for their supposedly impoverished German-language (L2) competencies. After being exposed to a negative stereotype about their own ingroup, those Italian participants who associated high importance to L2 competence performed worse in a German proficiency test than did those for whom this was not a self-relevant domain or who were not primed with the negative stereotype. This was also true if the stereotype threat manipulation was accomplished in a subtler way, as when participants were led to perceive their group as being generally a less advantaged group in the region. In this case, the participants’ pronunciations suffered from stereotype threat activation and associated levels of anxiety and arousal. A case in point here might be a traffic stop in which a Caucasian police officer engages a Hispanic driver. In this instance, the latter’s driving skills—and subsequently communicative competence in dealing with this multiple confrontational threat (e.g., perhaps even legal immigrant status)—could stressfully reinforce the person’s nonstandard dialect which, in turn, could yield negative language attitudes and consequent nonaccommodation from the officer (see Giles, Linz, Bonilla, & Gomez, 2012 ). The interactively cyclical nature of language attitudes featuring in ongoing discourse is explored more later.

Not only nonnative speakers but also speakers of nonstandard dialects more generally are faced with similar negative stereotypes about their language competences. Hence, an unfortunate outcome of an encounter between standard and nonstandard speaker may be triggered by even a slight or ambiguous comment or even gesture (from the former), making the negative stereotype salient to the latter. This, in turn, would have a negative impact on speech production for a nonstandard speaker, which would otherwise not have been the case. Ironically, his comment might actually be a more “positive” remark about how well a nonstandard accented individual is speaking or how hard it must be speaking in a second language.

Nonetheless, to announce to a given speaker that he or she “has an accent” (i.e., speaks with nonstandard accent) means to criticize them. As indicated in the receiver model of language criticism ( Marlow, 2010 ), there are different ways in which the speaker might deal with more or less explicit criticism of his or her nonstandard accent ( Marlow & Giles, 2010 ). Whereas some might be more adaptive or accommodative, others might experience repressed anger and avoid similar encounters in future. Moreover, the fact that speakers of nonstandard varieties are negatively evaluated and often subjected to criticism, in the long run, only reinforces the stigma applied to nonstandard speakers ( Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010 b ). What extreme consequences this might have in some cases became clear very recently when a Korean student shot his university colleagues who had allegedly teased and criticized him in regard to his way of speaking English ( Elias, 2012 ).

In sum, both speaker and listener, unwittingly (yet, on occasion, perhaps strategically) influence the reaction and performance of the other, as well as the evaluation of oneself. Furthermore, this link to the stereotype threat literature underscores the role of emotions in processing language attitudes. Indeed, and although only featuring in a small number of studies to date (e.g., Cargile & Giles, 1997 ; Giles, Williams, Mackie, & Rosselli. 1995 ; Reid et al., 2012 ), it has been regarded as a central part of the attitude concept (e.g., Smith, 1993 ) and can have a very strong influence on our perceptions, as well as on our interactions with others (see Ufkes, Otten, van der Zee, Giebels, & Dovidio, 2012 ).

Toward an Interaction-Based Model of Language Attitudes

In the earliest days of MGT studies, the approach—and hence the language attitude domain in general—was built on Lambert’s (e.g., 1967) theoretical premise that perceived language features → social categorization → trait attributions. In like manner, most studies’ endpoints are judgments of speakers on tape via questionnaire rating scales. In other words, they are typically noninteractive in design. As alluded to earlier, Marlow and Giles (2010) , however, investigated the ways in which listeners can comment across a variety of social, educational, and organizational settings—sometimes critically and severely—when encountering the language varieties of others (in this case, English and Hawaiian pidgin) and how the latter can variably manage such criticisms (see Marlow, 2010 ). Models have been developed that explore how language attitudes are integral to processing social interactions (e.g., Street & Hopper, 1982 ), particularly as they relate to the interpersonal history of speakers and their listeners ( Cargile & Bradac, 2001 ; Cargile, Giles, Ryan, & Bradac, 1994 ; Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010 a ).

Giles and Coupland (1991) presented their own model of the MGT, pointing to the fact that forming language attitudes can be a constructive, interpretive process. In expanding and elaborating on this position, as well as in building on the so-called communication ecology model (see Giles et al., 2006 ), Giles and Marlow (2011) argued for a dynamic model of language attitudes that was:

much more than [about] anonymous reports on questionnaires, produced on demand about unknown speakers in socially sterile, task-oriented settings. Rather,…[language attitudes] can also…feature more creatively as cogent elements within stories told, arguments rendered, and personas performed. In any case, language attitudes typically fulfill vital personal, rhetorical, and social needs whose origins are borne out of past, yet evolving, community concerns. (pp. 182–183)

Space precludes a detailed exposition of this complex model of interlocking processes; however, one central element of it—sense-making—is important to the extent that people endeavor “to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” ( Weick, 1993 , p. 635). In other words, the model appeals to the ways in which people try to make sense of their interactions, relationships, and the communicative styles of others based on expectations and their preconceived notions. It also appeals to the way in which language attitudes can be expressed, not in a verbal vacuum as a simple statement, if you like, but as an integral component of a measured argument (see Giles, 1992 ; Painter & Dixon, 2013 ).

To develop further sense-making processes, Giles (2011) invoked the theory of motivated information management (TMIM; e.g., Afifi, 2009 ) and, as a backdrop, offered a scenario similar to this:

(German) Local: “Where you from, then?” (Apparent) OUTSIDER [smiling confidently]: “Jena, Germany” LOCAL: [indicating somewhat perplexed]: “No, I meant where you really from?” OUTSIDER [indicating despair]: “Yeh, I’m really from Jena!” LOCAL: [somewhat agitated] “No, you have an accent, where did you originally come from?” OUTSIDER [somewhat reluctantly]: “OK, Croatia, but I have been in Germany for many years.” LOCAL: [somewhat surprised and confused]: “Oh?!” OUTSIDER [somewhat assertive]: “Actually, it’s you who have the accent!” LOCAL [somewhat indignant]: “What? I don’t have an accent!” OUTSIDER [somewhat arrogantly]: “I’m a language scholar, believe me, I study this kind of thing and you, like everyone else, does have an accent!”

As is apparent throughout this chapter, this dialogue conveys a not uncommon conversational event routinely endured by those who have an accent different from local residents—and this has a number of constituent features that go beyond the traditional MGT paradigm for assessing language attitudes.

First, language attitudes can be a discursive ongoing event in social life—and not merely a reactive pencil-and-paper task under controlled conditions. The local above positions herself as linguistically dissimilar from the outsider who actually happens to be a naturalized citizen of long standing. Second, such a linguistic conundrum can be open to prolonged negotiation, overt comment, and sometimes interrogation: at the outset, the outsider does not feel the need to explain herself as anything but “German” and, later, contends that she (erroneously) does not have “an accent.”

Third, the local (as indicated by the nonverbal signals) is expressively and emotively involved in sense-making: how can this person be a real German? Moreover, and in the language of TMIM, the local experiences an “uncertainty gap.” In other words, the local perhaps ponders why this outsider has not converged toward sounding like “a proper German” and/or may wonder why she has held onto her heritage pronunciations—and seemingly so tenaciously! Is it because the outsider does not identify with German values and even brings them implicitly into question?! Fourth, the outsider feels, by being confronted and questioned about the integrity of her parlance, that the local is inherently criticizing her.

Developing these ideas further, and in ways that might theoretically enhance future studies, we call now more directly on the TMIM as a useful heuristic for exploring language attitudes enacted in situations in which uncertainty gaps are evident and that require information management and sense-making. TMIM describes information management as a process that unfolds over three stages: interpretation, evaluation, and decision making. In the interpretation phase, people become aware of a difference between the level of uncertainty they have about a topic or, in our case, the relationship between accent usage and social origins, and the level of uncertainty they would like to have. Our local certainly experiences something like this, as indicated by the quoted dialogue (as well as perhaps experiencing a quick musing about accent diversity and national identity). This uncertainty discrepancy is linearly associated with anxiety (or other emotions alluded to in the dialogue), which is a partial mediator of the relationship between the uncertainty discrepancy and the information management process (see Fowler & Afifi, 2011 ).

Once in the evaluation phase, people assess a range of options open to them by considering the outcomes that a search for information—or, alternatively, a deliberate avoidance of it—may yield (outcome assessments) and their ability or self-efficacy to gain the information they seek or not. Clearly, our outsider exuded self-efficacy by unexpectedly trumping the local’s initial feelings of being in command of the conversation by alleging their professional credentials. TMIM predicts a positive relationship between efficacy judgments and outcome assessments, with the strength of the relationship determined by the valence of the outcome expectancies. The ultimate meta-communicative decision as to whether to exchange views about each other’s accent usages and, if so how, would then follow. The position being advanced here is that the language attitudes paradigm can involve parallel processing by both speaker and listener-judge who can reciprocally assume each of these roles.

Finally, there are some important features of this TMIM-inspired model of language attitudes that also might indicate valuable (and other) avenues of further work:

Language attitudes can be ecologically richer than that caricatured in the original, albeit, seminal MGT studies.

The stance taken reaffirms the importance of emotions in language attitudes by alluding to the mediating roles of disrespect, shame, disgust, anger, pity, and so forth.

It affords communicative self-efficacy (as well as the different kinds of it, see Fowler & Afifi, 2012) a central role in the language attitudes process.

The model underscores language attitude situations as being often negotiative ones involving interpretive, sense-making processes. This can lead to decisions about establishing a dialogue about some, and criticizing (or praising) the others’ communicative practices, or withholding or avoiding such discourse, and so forth.

Obviously, further theoretical refinements and elaborations are in order for this model, as well as for its relationships with extant others (e.g., Dovidio & Gluszek, 2012 ; Giles & Marlow, 2011 ) to flourish as a more robust theoretical frame for language attitudes. However, this motivated information management model of language attitudes implicates new variables and processes that can fruitfully be applied in future empirical research.

As a summary snapshot of work in this arena that is so central to the social psychology of language, we conclude by proposing a number of heuristic principles that might not only organize future reviews of language attitudes work but may also excite further refinements and elaborations of the propositions listed here. These are reconstituted and embellished after an initial foray into this vein by Dragojevic et al. (2013) who framed their principles in line, in part, with the theme of language ideologies.

Voices and speech styles can be socially diagnostic, sometimes accurately and other times stereotypically, of others’ attributes.

Such language attitude schemas, particularly as they relate to accent and dialect use, can be learned and judgmentally invoked very early in the lifespan.

Language attitudes, as they relate to accent, can be more predictive in forging social judgments and shaping applied decisions than other, quite potent, physical cues (e.g., appearance).

Language varieties can be dichotomized in terms of those imbued with natural, cultured sophistication on the one hand and those with innate inferiority on the other. Consequently, the former speakers are attributed with intellectual competence, whereas the latter can be considered cognitively and communicatively inadequate.

Stigmatized language varieties can, however, fulfill important social identity-enhancing, community-promoting, and bonding/solidarity functions for their speakers, and such speakers can be attributed by outsiders with traits of social attractiveness, such as trustworthiness and kindness.

Language attitudes are, nonetheless, not immutable social schemas and can be shaped by other language varieties that are in the comparative frame at the time wherein different social identities can be triggered for listener-judges. Intergroup (e.g., fluctuating power relations between ethnic and national group) and other social dynamics can influence longstanding judgmental profiles.

Language attitudes can be associated with affective meanings (e.g., irritation or satisfaction). Yet they can also be ambivalent (and sometimes seemingly contradictory), causing stress and anxiety that requires information management depending on the social groups targeted, methods employed, and the plethora of social contexts in which they are evoked.

Threats to a speaker’s beliefs about others’ stereotypical views of their ingroup’s task and communicative proficiencies can lead the former to accentuate nonstandard language forms that can induce their recipients to form negative language attitudes and unfavorable (and sometimes overtly critical) behavioral inclinations toward them.

Language attitudes are not only evaluative reactions people have about others’ speech styles—or even triggers to react subtly or directly toward them—but are integral elements in how individuals make sense of and manage information about the situations in which they find themselves, as well as assist in constructing narratives, arguments, and explanations about the character and behavior of members of certain social categories.

This chapter has overviewed extant and emergent work in the language attitudes tradition and proposed new directions for future research, and especially as constituents of interpretive, discursive, argumentative, and even evolutionary processes. Elevated to attention were a number of accent studies that suggest that emotion, message content, the linguistic landscape, the comparative reference frame, and speakers’ facial features should all be objects of further empirical scrutiny as well as investigated in concert with other speech and nonverbal variables. In tandem, we recommend that more theoretical energy be devoted to the complex roles of comprehension and stereotype threat in impacting evaluations of accented speakers and how these, in turn, can shape feelings of ingroup identification and subjective well-being. Further exploration of the ways in which nonstandard accented speech is favorably or unfavorably viewed as a function of whether it is regional, ethnic minority, immigrant, class-related, or foreign (not to mention the different classes and social histories of variables within each of these categories) is deserving of unpacking. Finally, we hope that the previously mentioned renaissance of language attitudes research and the recent focus on process will be further served by the research and ideas conveyed in this chapter—and especially with appreciation of the fact that attitudes toward language varieties and their speakers are changing radically in some regions of the world (see Davies & Bentahila, 2013 ).

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Language Attitudes and Minority Languages

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• Pádraig Ó Riagáin 3  

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Introduction

As the research literature throws up a variety of definitions of attitudes, the general and relatively straightforward definition provided by Sarnoff ( 1970 , p. 279) is widely used as a starting point—for him an attitude is ‘a disposition to react favourably or unfavourably to a class of objects’. In the case of language attitudes, the ‘class of objects’ which instigate such reactions are, of course, always language related. Baker ( 1992 , p. 29, cited in Garrett, Coupland and Williams, 2003 , p. 12) has observed that some or all of the following ‘objects’ have formed the focus of language attitude studies: language variation, dialect and speech style; learning a new language; specific minority languages; language groups, communities, minorities; language lessons; parents of children learning languages; language preferences and language use. Even this list is not exhaustive. Giles, Hewstone and Ball ( 1983 , p. 83), for example, would also include ‘opinions concerning …...

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Riagáin, P.Ó. (2008). Language Attitudes and Minority Languages. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_159

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Language attitudes and their implications for education: Morocco as a case study

Bouzidi, Hassan (1989) Language attitudes and their implications for education: Morocco as a case study. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate Language Attitudes in three representative areas of Morocco. The impact of these attitudes on the individual's socio-psychological make up, especially within the system of education, is examined and emphasis is put upon the relationship between students' and parents' attitudes on the one hand and achievement in second-language learning on the other hand. The working hypothesis is that it helps learners of a second language, who wish to hve a good command of the language, to hold a positive attitude towards the other speech community. By adopting a socio-psychological approach, I seek to examine my subjects' affective as well as behavioural dispositions and the impact of the latter on any language planning programme. By so doing I intend to contribute to the search for a most suitable approach to language-rleated problems in Morocco. To achieve this purpose, a group of workers, students and teachers volunteered to fill out questionnaires on their evaluations of languages and language planning efforts in Morocco. Others volunteered to take part in the matched-guise experiments and interviews concerning their use of language and their desire to learn a second language. The attitude-behaviour relationship was also examined through observation, including participant observation. The subjects were stratified according to age, sex, mother tongue, social status and provenance. The first three substantive sections of the dissertation aim at familiarising the reader with the sociolinguistic situation in Morocco, social psychology as applied to language studies, and the data-eliciting techniques used in the thesis. The subsequent three chapters are concerned with the analysis and discussion of the corpus of data. The results showed significant differences between the attitudes of the groups towards French, SA and the vernacular languages (i.e. MA and MB). The correlation analysis showed a negative relationship between grades and the attitude variables. Only a weak relationship was found between socio-psychological variables and second-language proficiency. Attitudinal and motivational characteristics obtained from the students' parents were included in the study, and a positive correlation between student language proficiency and parental language attitudes and motivation was obtained.

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A survey on language use, attitudes, and identity in relation to Philippine English among young generation Filipinos: An initial sample from a private university

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