Linguistics Seminar Talk - Florian Breit

Title:  The interaction of policy, attitudes, and vitality: evidence from three bilingual communities.

Abstract 

Active language policy and the fostering or maintenance of positive attitudes are fundamental components in the prevention of language shift (e.g. Fishman, 1990). This, together with recent methodological developments in sociolinguistics (Kircher & Zipp, 2022) calls for a more holistic approach to the measurement of language attitudes and their relationship with exposure levels. We present three large studies investigating the relationship between early exposure, language attitudes, and different bilingual language policies across three European communities where a minority/endangered language co-exists with a sociolinguistically dominant language.
The bilingual communities under investigation are Lombard—Italian in Italy, Moselle‑Franconian—German in Belgium, and Welsh—English in Wales, exemplifying fundamentally different types of language policy as well as systematic variation in both opportunities for and amount of early exposure. The Welsh language receives full socio-political recognition, and there exist ample opportunities for people to be exposed to Welsh either in the family or broader community. Lombard, on the other hand, is in a situation of benign neglect, not benefitting from any active policy and with rather scarce opportunities for exposure except for those who grow up in a predominantly Lombard-speaking family. Moselle‑Franconian is somewhat in between: while Moselle-Franconian itself is not officially recognised, its speakers are recognised as part of Belgium’s German-speaking minority. Importantly, the diglossic situation (Ferguson, 1959) in the area where Moselle-Franconian is spoken, means that Moselle-Franconian is regularly spoken in daily communication, hence providing ample opportunities for early exposure.
We explore the relationship between these different sociolinguistic situations, exposure, and some extralinguistic variables (e.g. gender) and attitude dimensions such as status and solidarity by comparing data from 338 participants aged 24-36, collected using three different methodologies that varied in degree of explicitness: the Attitudes towards Languages Questionnaire (Schoel et al., 2012), the Matched Guise Technique (Lambert et al., 1960), and the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., 1998).
Our results suggest potential links between bilingual language policy and speakers’ attitudes, with possible interactions between types of exposure and some of the attitude scores. This research has the potential to provide insight into how different policies may affect language attitudes, and the role of early exposure as potential mediator.

References
Fishman, J. A. (1990). What is reversing language shift (RLS) and how can it succeed?. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 11(1-2), 5-36.
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464.
Kircher, R., & Zipp, L. (Eds.). (2022). Research methods in language attitudes. Cambridge University Press.
Lambert, W. E., Hodgson, R. C., Gardner, R. C., & Fillenbaum, S. (1960). Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60(4), 44.
Schoel, C., Roessel, J., Eck, J., Janssen, J., Petrovic, B., Rothe, A., Rudert, S.C. and Stahlberg, D., 2013. “Attitudes Towards Languages”(AToL) Scale: A Global Instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32(1), pp.21-45.