Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 873

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

Investigating Sociolinguistic Receptivity

Authors: Benson, Erica J.; Risdal, Megan L.
Submitted by: Benson, Erica J. (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, United States of America)

In this paper, we attempt to develop a psychometrically valid assessment of one's appreciation of sociolinguistic diversity and knowledge of linguistic principles, what we call "sociolinguistic receptivity", and investigate the effect it has on other attitudes toward language, specifically attitudes toward informal and nonstandard forms. This research is motivated by two gaps in the language attitude literature. The first is the lack of research on factors responsible for variation in language attitudes. Garrett (2010) and Preston (2010:23) have called for more research on variation in language attitude studies; in particular, Garrett (2010:176) identifies an individual's valuing of sociolinguistic diversity as especially worthy of more attention (see, e.g., Coupland & Bishop 2007). The second gap is the lack of empirical research to support the common assumption that greater knowledge of linguistic (and sociolinguistic) principles results in more positive attitudes toward nonstandard linguistic forms (e.g., Reaser 2007).

In this presentation, we focus on the following research question: Does greater knowledge of linguistic principles and positive orientation to sociolinguistic diversity, collectively sociolinguistic receptivity, result in greater acceptability of informal and nonstandard forms.

We report on data from our study of more than 300 respondents, all native-English speakers and life-long residents of the United States. Respondents completed an on-line survey (with 7-point Likert-type scale responses). First, participants indicated their agreement with statements like, "Minority dialects often contain grammatical errors", to assess their sociolinguistic receptivity (with significant inter-item reliability). Second, participants judged the correctness of sentences containing informal (e.g., gonna as in "My brother told me he’s gonna call me later"), nonstandard forms (e.g., I’ma as in "I’m tired so I’ma come home early tonight"), and formal standard (e.g., going to). Analysis of the data from the pilot study's sixty-two respondents (42 women, 20 men; aged 18-63) is promising: Respondents in the high sociolinguistic receptivity group rated informal and nonstandard sentences as significantly more correct than respondents in the low and medium sociolinguistic receptivity groups (ANOVAs and the post-hoc tests, p<.05). As expected, no significant differences were found among the three groups' ratings of formal standard forms.

The findings suggest that sociolinguistic receptivity is an important factor in language attitude research and support the assumption that knowledge of linguistic principles leads to more positive attitudes toward nonstandard linguistic forms. Further research is needed to determine whether sociolinguistic receptivity plays a role in other types of language attitudes, for example, perceptions of particular dialects.

References

Coupland, Nikolas & Hywel Bishop. 2007. Ideologised values for British accents. JournalofSociolinguistics 11.1: 74–93.

Garrett, Peter. 2010. Attitudes to language. Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Preston, Dennis R. 2010. Variation in language regard. In E. Zeigler, P. Gilles, & J. Scharloth (eds), Variatio delectat: Empirische Evidenzen und theoretische Passungen sprachlicher Variation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 7-27.

Reaser, Jeffrey. 2007. Evaluating and improving high school students’ folk perceptions of dialects. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13.2:179-192.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

Investigating Sociolinguistic Receptivity