• Language attitudes are the feelings people have about
their own language variety or the languages or language varieties of others. • “Different group of people within the same society may come out on different parts of the (attitudinal) scale” (Grimes:1995, 60). • “Knowledge about attitudes is fundamental to the formulation of a policy as well as to success in its implementation” (Lewis: 1981, 262). NATURE OF ATTITUDES
ATTITUDE IS A ATTITUDES CANNOT BE
HYPOTHETICAL CONSTRUCT DIRECTLY OBSERVED
• Used to explain the direction • But inferred from the direction
and persistence of human and persistence of external behavior behavior COMPONENTS OF ATTITUDES
The thoughts or belief
concerning the object of the COGNITIVE attitude
The feelings you have
towards the object of your AFFECTIVE attitude
Your readiness for action
as a result of the attitude BEHAVIORAL • WHAT IS YOUR AFFECTIVE REACTION WHEN YOU SEE THIS CAR? Feelings of excitement? Anger and resentment (e.g., if you are a local car manufacturing employee and the car is foreign made)
• WHAT IS YOUR BEHAVIORAL REACTION?
Do you go to a dealership and test-drive the car and actually buy one?
• WHAT IS YOUR COGNITIVE REACTION?
What beliefs do you hold about the car’s attributes? Perhaps you admire its hybrid engine that makes it one of the most fuel efficient cars you can buy. ‘TOMATO’ or ‘TOMATO’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS ACCENT
The Cambridge Dictionary defines the accents as the
way in which people in a particular area or country pronounce words.
Commonly, people do not believe that they themselves
possess one, however it is impossible for anybody to speak without using an accent. ATTITUDE TOWARDS ACCENT
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967).in his book Biological
foundations of language, noted that the degree to which a person can substitute one accent for another is severely dependent upon the age at which the second language is learned.
Then, at my age or for all those like me, non-native
speakers, it is unrealistic to expect sound just like a native English speaker, regardless our commitment, intelligence, and motivation. EXPERIMENTS - INTELLIGENCE • In 1975 a study was conducted by Giles and Powesland using a method called the matched-guise technique. • This technique involved playing a recording of a speaker imitating different accents and then asking participants to rate the speaker on different categories such as attractiveness or social status. • The study found that standard accents such as RP (Received Pronunciation is the accent of Standard English in the United Kingdom and is defined in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as "the standard accent of English) were more likely to be associated with a person who is a prestigious and articulate speaker. EXPERIMENTS - POLITICAL • Giles and Ryan (1982) has concluded that a certain accent can change public opinion and show the speaker’s social class. • Matched-guised technique: Four groups of people were asked to listen to a recording about capital punishment.
The first group listened to the argument in RP
The second group listened to it in South Wales accent The third in Somerset accent The fourth in Birmingham accent EXPERIMENTS - POLITICAL
• Result: The RP speaker is considered to have higher
competency compared to the local accent speaker.
• However, the respondents tend to agree with arguments
of the local accent speaker.
• Shanmugasundaram, a candidate of Parti Sosialis Malaysia
competing for Port Klang seat has a very deep English accent. He stopped schooling at the age of 15 years old. CONCLUSION Language attitudes, we have seen, are determined by a multitude of numerical strength, geographical distribution, ethnicity, religion, language identity, domains of language use, status of language development, minority-majority relationship, socio- economic and political power. QUESTIONS How can language attitude be in the positive form towards a language? By considering a language’s social status, it’s usage and it’s cultural values that hold the language can contribute to creating a positive form of a language. How can such changes for a positive attitude towards a language be brought about? Positive attitudes towards people who speak the language and the language itself can help them to learn the language. Reference Elyıldırım, S., & Ashton, S. (2006). Creati ng Positi ve Atti tudes Towards English As A Foreign Language. English Teaching Forum, 4, 2-21. Retrieved From htt ps://americanenglish.state.gov/fi les/ae/re source_fi les/06-44-4-b.pdf.
Dr. Manjeet Kaur. (2018). Language Atti tude. Lecture
Presented At Lecture Hall J (English In Society).
Abby, B. (2014, June 25). Week 5 Lecture--language Atti tudes