How entrenched are students' attitudes to national varieties of English?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
Attitudes are usually defined as positive or negative reactions to an object (e.g. Bohner, 2001; Ajzen, 2005). In the context of language attitudes, this object is a language, its speakers, features, varieties and/or linguistic usage (Baker, 1992: 17). Attitudes towards different language varieties also reflect attitudes towards wider social, cultural, political and geographical contexts of these varieties, and to some extent rely on ‘speakers’ own cultural background and stereotypes of particular cultures or societies that their own culture has mediated' (Bredella, 1991: 59). As Holmes (2001: 343) suggests, people generally do not hold opinions towards languages in a vacuum, but ‘develop attitudes towards languages which reflect their views about those who speak the languages, and the contexts and functions with which they are associated’.