WHAT JONATHAN DAVID

IS S/O DAEVID

LANGUAGE 128653

ATTITUDE? 950416-10-5543

YEAR 3
WHAT IS LANGUAGE ATTITUDE?

• 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

Part 1 [VIDEO]. Youtube, 1, 10:09.
THANK YOU