Language attitudes as predictors of morphosyntactic variation: Evidence from Catalan speakers in southern France

Abstract

This article explores the potential role of attitudes as motivating factors in language variation and change. This study represents an important departure from existing scholarship through its consideration of quantitative measures of language attitudes as factors in multivariate analyses of linguistic data. Four morphosyntactic variables in Northern Catalan (an obsolescent variety spoken in France) will be examined in order to determine which factors significantly correlate with use of local or supralocal variants. Linear regression modelling reveals firm correlations for two of the variables, wherein positive evaluations of Catalan varieties on the status dimension (cf. Carranza & Ryan, 1975; Woolard, 1989, inter alia) align with supralocal variant use. We will see that attitudes can be helpful in uncovering motivations for language variation, but that qualitative ideological data are indispensable in the interpretation of findings.

Mixed-Methods Approaches to the Study of Language Attitudes

“…Importantly, both data sets were included in the same linear regression model, with the attitudinal results serving as independent variables in the analysis of phonetic and morphosyntactic data as dependent variables. The results showed that, for five of eight variables studied, language attitudes functioned as statistically significant predictors of variation (Hawkey 2020). In all cases, if a participant rated Catalan highly on the status dimension, they were more likely to use the supralocal (Central Catalan) variant of a given variable.…”

Why does the shtyle spread? Street prestige boosts the diffusion of urban vernacular features

“…It is interesting to note that the wording of the relation between evaluation and diffusion often oscillates between weaker and stronger versions of causation. A tell-tale example is Hawkey's (2019) corpus study of the impact of evaluations of Catalan on supralocal Catalan variant use in French Catalonia, in which he captures the alleged causality in weaker terms—‘evaluations align with supralocal use’ (2019:1) and ‘language attitudes do indeed function as statistically significant correlates of variation’ (2019:16, emphasis added)—but also stronger terms, as he ‘aim[s] to provide quantitative evidence of how attitudes may function as motivators of language variation and change’ (2019:5, emphasis added).…”

« Même si l’usage du français décline, là où pourtant il était si foisonnant… » : The sociolinguistic situation of French in Andorra

“…The field of social psychology offers quantitative paradigms for the examination of language attitudesthese studies frequently use direct attitude elicitation methods (such as surveys) or indirect methods (such as matched-guise or implicit association tests) in order to obtain large datasets and thereby elucidate the links between attitudes and behaviour patterns (Garrett, Coupland and Williams 2003: 13). Language attitudes are typically evaluated along two distinct dimensions, status and solidarity (see Carranza and Ryan 1975;Ryan, Carranza and Moffie 1977 for early studies; see Kircher and Fox 2019;Hawkey 2020 for more recent work), these being associated broadly with instrumental and integrative value respectively. Meanwhile, the study of language ideologies has emerged from extensive work in linguistic anthropology and places central importance on the nature of belief systems as 'derived from, rooted in, reflective of, or responsive to the experience or interests of a particular social position, even though ideology so often [:::] represents itself as universally true' (Woolard 1998: 6).…”