A sociolinguistic approach to implicit language attitudes towards historically white English accents among young L1 South African indigenous language speakers

  1. Álvarez-Mosquera, Pedro 12
  2. Marín-Gutiérrez, Alejandro 3
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca 37008, Spain
  2. 2 University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
  3. 3 Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, Bogotá, Cundianmarca, Colombia
Revista:
International Journal of the Sociology of Language

ISSN: 0165-2516 1613-3668

Año de publicación: 2019

Volumen: 2019

Número: 260

Páginas: 131-153

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1515/IJSL-2019-2051 GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: International Journal of the Sociology of Language

Resumen

This study investigates the potential role of context-relevant sociolinguistic factors in explaining young L1 indigenous South African language speakers’ IAT (Implicit Association Test) scores towards two varieties largely associated with the white group: Standard South African English and Afrikaans accented English. To this end, a post-IAT sociolinguistic survey on participants’ linguistic background, language exposure and intergroup social distance levels (among other social factors) was used. Separate ANOVAS were performed using the IAT reaction times as a dependent variable and sociolinguistic variables as factors. Notably, the sociolinguistic approach revealed that more positive attitudes towards Afrikaans accented English are correlated with the language range of participants, the dominant languages spoken in their places of origin, and the type of school they have attended.

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