Attitudes to Language »

Just about everyone seems to have views about language. Language attitudes and language ideologies permeate our daily lives. Our competence, intelligence, friendliness, trustworthiness, social status, group memberships, and so on, are often judged from the way we communicate. Even the speed at which we speak can evoke reactions. And we often try to anticipate such judgements as we communicate. In this lively introduction, Peter Garrett draws upon research carried out over recent decades in order to discuss such attitudes and the implications they have for our use of language, for social advantage or discrimination, and for social identity. Using a range of examples that includes punctuation, words, grammar, pronunciation, accents, dialects and languages, this book explores the intricate and fascinating ways in which language influences our everyday thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

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1 Introduction 1

2 Fundamentals of language attitudes 19

3 Main approaches to the study of language attitudes 37

4 Matched and verbal guise studies: focus on English 53

5 Matched and verbal guise research in more contexts 70

6 Attitudes to speech styles and other variables: communication features, speakers, hearers and contexts 88

7 Communication accommodation theory 105

8 Language attitudes in professional contexts 121

9 Societal treatment studies 142

10 Direct approach 159

11 Folklinguistics 179

12 An integrated programme of language attitudes research 201

13 Conclusion 224

Glossary 228

References 230

Index 254