• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 344

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Idiosyncratic dimensions of language attitudes

Authors: Santello, Marco
Submitted by: Santello, Marco (University of Sydney, Australia)

Language attitude research has focused on a precise number of dimensions, broadly attested in the literature, which have been elicited using both indirect and direct approaches. Although indirect approaches have been gaining increasing attention, direct approaches have been fruitful in isolating constructs able to predict certain behavioural responses. However, in recent times, both these ways of thinking of language attitudes have produced contradictory results that point towards the necessity of identifying new dimensions able to allow for both the complex multidimensionality of language attitudes and possible language-specific attitudes stemming from certain sociolinguistic environments.

In this paper we demonstrate that language attitudes may be made up of a number of latent dimensions that go beyond status/solidarity and instrumentality/integration found in previous academic studies. In particular, we show that Italian-English bilinguals in Australia rate their two languages according to several idiosyncratic dimensions that seem to be particularly context-bound. These dimensions are likely to be discovered through 1) elicitation of adjectives in group-interviews and 2) the employment of the semantic differential technique within a direct approach. Principal component analysis will then reveal the latent factors behind language attitudes as they naturally align in separate components. This method provides insights on language attitudes as sociopsychological constructions avulsed from their specific manifestations and accounts for both their language-specific singularity and intrinsic multidimensionality.