Language Attitudes: An Overview

It was not until 1960 with Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner and Fillebaum that linguists started being scientifically interested in people’s views about a language or a dialect and its associations, which were given the name of language attitudes. The present paper addresses this issue by defining language attitudes and why it is important to study how people feel about a linguistic variety and its associations. Reference is made to the several ways of measuring attitudes proposed at times, along with the criticism that has led linguists to support different movements. The main driving force behind this disagreement is based on the question whether attitudes towards a linguistic code lead people to use or abandon it. This overview constitutes an effort to bring the most important matters around language attitudes together and give an impetus to linguists to engage with this field.