Piergiorgio Mura

ABSTRACT

Within the indirect approach in language attitudes research, the Matched-Guise Technique (MGT) has long represented the dominant paradigm (Labov, 2001). Some speakers are heard reading the same text in more than one language and get judged on their personalities; as listeners are not aware of the experiment structure, it is possible to see how their evaluations of speakers change according to the language used. Sardinian, despite being an officially protected minority language in Italy, is undergoing a severe process of language shift in favour of Italian (Schjerve, 2017). Although language attitudes are thought to be crucial in reversing such trends (Baker, 1992), sociolinguistic studies have only explored attitudes towards Sardinian with direct methods; therefore, the adoption of an indirect measurement might bring new and more reliable findings. This work focuses on the administration of the MTG, with some speakers reading in both Sardinian and Italian, to school and university students. Are Sardinian voices evaluated differently from the Italian ones? Based on common trends (Van Herk, 2012) and traditional views in Sardinia (Tufi, 2013), it is conceivable that minority language voices are positively judged on traits related to likability and pleasantness, while majority language voices on socioeconomic and cultural traits. In this case, island’s current sociolinguistic conditions would seem to consolidate. If Sardinian ‘guises’ are also favourably rated on status-related traits, this might suggest that the new generations assign enhanced value to the local language, in line with what Sardinia’s language policies have been attempting to do in the last years.

Keywords

language attitudes; indirect method; matched-guise technique; minority language; regional language; Sardinian; language policy

References

1. Baker, C. (1992). Attitudes and Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

2. Labov, W. (2001). Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

3. Schjerve, R. R. (2017). Sociolinguistica e vitalità del sardo. In E. Blasco Ferrer, P. Koch & D. Marzo (Eds.), Manuale di linguistica sarda (pp.31-44). Berlin: De Gruyter.

4. Tufi, S. (2013). Language ideology and language maintenance: The case of Sardinia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2013(219), 145–160. DOI: 10.1515/ijsl-2013-0009.

5. Van Herk, G. (2012) What is sociolinguistics?. Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.