124.
Attitude Measurements
124. Attitude Measurements / Messung von Einstellungen
1. Introduction
2. ‘Societal treatment’ approach
3. Direct and indirect approaches
4. Presentation techniques
5. Attitudinal response gathering
6. Current issues and directions
7. Literature (selected)
1. Introduction
Social evaluations of language are rightly re-
garded as a central concern in socioling-
uistics. Such evaluations can reveal the dy-
namic identificational and relational forces
at work within sociolinguistic communities.
These include prejudice held against or in
favour of regional or social varieties of lan-
guage. And they include allegiances and af-
filiative feelings towards one’s own or other
groups’ speech norms and stereotypes of
speech styles. Accordingly, the emphasis
below is on the investigation of attitudes at
the level of social groups, rather than the
level of the individual case in, say, interac-
tive sequences of talk. What we know about
ideologies of language can be said to derive
mainly from grouped data, and it is arguably
at this group level that attitude measure-
ment has a key role. The term ‘measure-
ment’, however, can seem overly restrictive,
as if limited to attitude scales. As will be seen
below, the term is used to embrace at least
some degree of qualitative identification and
interpretation. Following Ryan/Giles/Hew-
stone (1988), language attitude measure-
ment is organised here under three broad ap-
proaches – ‘societal treatment’, direct, and
indirect – with some merging of the latter
two.
2. ‘Societal treatment’ approach
Arguably, the societal treatment approach
tends to be overlooked in contemporary dis-
cussions of language attitudes research, but
it is undoubtedly an important source of in-
sights into the relative status and stereotypi-
cal associations of language varieties. It gen-
erally investigates the ‘treatment’ given to
language varieties and their speakers within
a society. Research in this category typically
involves observational, participant observa-
tion, and ethnographic studies, or the con-
tent analysis of sources in the public do-
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1251
main. Stevens (1983), for example, con-
ducted a field study of attitudes towards
Classical Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and
French amongst highly literate Tunisian bi-
linguals in a variety of settings. His data was
gathered from a mix of participant observa-
tion and casual conversations, through
friendships and invitations to social gather-
ings and family festivities, as well as from in-
formal and formal interviews with lawyers
and other professionals and their clients. He
then considered these fieldwork findings in
relation to a content analysis of official pol-
icies and other publicly available sources in
Tunisia. – Other societal treatment studies
have included the analysis of governmental
and educational language policy documents
and their view on the use of various lan-
guages in schools in Catalonia (Cots/Nuss-
baum 1999), job advertisements in Mon-
treal, and the occupational demands for
Anglophone and Francophone bilinguals
(Lieberson 1981), the use of pidgins and
creoles by various character-types in novels
(Rickford/Traugott 1985), media output,
such as ethnocultural stereotypes projected
through the use of foreign languages in ad-
vertisements in Japan (Haarmann 1984;
1986) and through the use of English in
magazine advertisements in Switzerland
(Cheshire/Moser 1994), cartoons, proverbs,
and etiquette books, and what they have to
say about women (Kramarae 1982), and his-
torical writings about purity in language
(Aitchison 2001). Milroy’s (1999) work on
socially dominant ideologies in relation to
language could also fall under this rubric.
Analysing contemporary media sources, she
investigates the sociohistorical processes
contributing to the forming of sets of beliefs
about language – beliefs that people tend to
take for granted and which can evoke strong
‘gut reactions’ (1999, 176). Issues of stan-
dardness, correctness, and stigma in relation
to the English language, she argues, are re-
lated more to race and ethnicity in the USA ,
and more to class in Britain and Ireland. Al-
though many ‘societal treatment’ studies are
largely qualitative in approach, some al-
so employ formal sampling procedures and
(at least descriptive) statistics (e.g. Lieber-
son 1981; Cheshire/Moser 1994). – The rela-
tively minor mention in the attitudes litera-
ture of societal treatment studies seems
1252
unlikely to reflect any dearth of such work.
There is probably considerable attitudinal
data in many ethnographic studies, for
example, which simply do not get incorpor-
ated into ‘mainstream’ reviews. Many atti-
tudes researchers (and especially those in
the quantitative social psychological tradi-
tion) view much of this societal treatment re-
search as something of a preliminary for
more sociolinguistic and social psychological
studies (Ryan/Giles/Hewstone 1988, 1069), or
perhaps as a source of convergent validity to
data collected through direct or indirect
methods (Knops/van Hout 1988, 7). Knops/
van Hout have also argued that some socie-
tal treatment studies may be appropriate
where restrictions of time and space do not
allow access to informants, or where inform-
ants can only be accessed under highly un-
natural conditions. The flood of work in dis-
course analysis and text analysis makes the
very different assumption, of course, that
this work can stand independently of these
other approaches.
3. Direct and indirect approaches
Direct approach studies are generally more
intrusive than ‘societal treatment’ studies,
and are characterised by elicitation: asking
direct questions about language evaluation,
preference etc., usually through question-
naires and/or interviews. So it is not so much
the researcher who infers attitudes from the
observed behaviours, as in societal treament
studies, but the respondents themselves who
are asked to articulate them. One can of
course argue that answering interview ques-
tions, ticking boxes or circling numbers
on scales on questionnaires are all them-
selves merely behaviours from which the re-
searcher has to infer attitudes. But they are
arguably one remove from the behaviours
analysed in societal treatment research. Per-
ceptual dialectological and folk linguistic
techniques, considered below, can also be
viewed as a direct approach.
Indirect approaches to researching atti-
tudes involve engaging in more subtle (even
deceptive) techniques than directly asking
overt questions. Ethical issues concerning
such deception are normally dealt with
through subsequent debriefing of inform-
ants. Although a number of strategies exist
under this heading (Dawes/Smith 1985), the
indirect approach in language attitudes re-
search is generally seen as synonymous with
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VII. Sociolinguistic Methodology
the matched guise technique (MGT ), devel-
oped in the late 1950s by Lambert and his
colleagues in Canada (e.g. Lambert/Hodg-
son/Gardner et al. 1960), and with tech-
niques deriving from it. Typically, respon-
dents hear an audiotaped recording of a
single speaker reading the same ‘factually
neutral’ text a number of times, differing on
each occasion in one respect only (e.g. ac-
cent or speech rate). Respondents are told
that they will be listening to a number of dif-
ferent speakers. After hearing each speaker,
they pause to fill in attitude rating scales.
The technique assumes that speech style sets
off certain social categorisations that then
lead to a set of group-related trait infer-
ences. Indirect approaches are seen as par-
ticularly useful where it is too intrusive or
detrimental or not possible to administer di-
rect questions through interviews or ques-
tionnaires (Perloff 1993, 44). Lambert/
Hodgson/Gardner et al. (1960) saw the
MGT as an effective way to elicit people’s
private attitudes. This issue is revisited
below, since it underlies much discussion in
decisions about choice of attitude measure-
ment. – For the most part, the decisive dif-
ference between direct and indirect ap-
proaches in language attitudes research
concerns the stage at which the language sti-
muli are presented rather than the instru-
ments through which respondents record
their attitudes, or the subsequent analysis.
In most direct approach studies, respon-
dents are required to conceptualise what is
meant by, say, ‘Australian English’, ‘Cock-
ney’, etc. (terms usually provided by the re-
searchers) and this requirement precludes
indirectness. In perceptual dialectological
and folklinguistic studies, ‘conceptual’ pres-
entation of this sort is also sometimes used
(e.g. Preston 1999a), but it is perhaps more
likely that respondents are representing
their own construals to the researchers,
rather than being given predetermined la-
bels. For example, they may draw on a map
where they perceive main dialect boundaries
to be, and then provide their own labels (see
later section on response gathering). But
MGT respondents are presented with repre-
sentative audio-recorded samples of the lin-
guistic variety the researcher wants them to
evaluate. As far as the display of attitudes is
concerned, however, the use of semantic dif-
ferential scales, although typical in MGT
studies, is not exclusive to them. Giles
(1970), for example, using both conceptual
124. Attitude Measurements
and vocal stimuli in his study of accented
English, employed the same semantic differ-
ential scales and analysis for both sets of
data. For this reason, the different ways of
presenting language stimuli are now con-
sidered, and then, secondly, the various
ways in which respondents are asked to rec-
ord their attitudes.
4. Presentation techniques
The debate around presentation modes has
tended to centre on issues of validity.
Through the use of vocal renditions of sev-
eral speech varieties by the same person,
reading the same ‘factually neutral’ text,
and keeping constant as far as possible other
features such as speech rate, pitch etc. (e.g.
where accent has been investigated), the
MGT claims to control out all but the ma-
nipulated variable, so that only this variable
remains to explain variable patterns of re-
sponse among the respondents. MGT has
thus facilitated the investigation of language
at different levels of specificity, from ‘whole’
languages such as Welsh and English in bi-
lingual settings (e.g. Bourhis/Giles 1976) to
specific language features in isolation – ac-
cent, speech rate, pitch, age-related voice
qualities, lexical diversity, convergence and
divergence in language use (see Cargile/
Giles/Ryan et al. 1994 for an overview). In
this way, it has provided a detailed demon-
stration of the role of language code and
style choice in impression formation, as well
as leading to the cumulative development of
theory (Giles/Coupland 1991). The MGT
tradition has also established the most regu-
lar dimensions of judgements across many
communities: to use Zahn/Hopper’s (1985)
terms, superiority, social attractiveness, and
dynamism. Dominant though this approach
was during the 1970s and 1980s, there have
nevertheless been many recurring criticisms.
One is that the speech stimuli are too con-
trived. By comparison, in what is referred to
as the ‘verbal guise’ technique, a number of
different speakers read the same text onto
tape (e.g. Paltridge/Giles 1984, in their study
of regional accents of French; Nesdale/Roo-
ney 1996 in their study of Australian English
accents; and Bayard/Weatherall/Gallois et
al. 2001, in their study of British, American,
Australian, and New Zealand English ac-
cents). Other studies have used a number of
different speakers controlled only by topic
or broad content (e.g. El-Dash/Tucker 1975,
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1253
in their study in Egypt of Egyptian, British,
and American varieties of English and Clas-
sical and colloquial Arabic in Egypt), or
have simply asked different speakers to tell a
story of their own (Garrett/Coupland/Wil-
liams 1999), or taken excerpts from
relatively open interviews (Jørgensen/Quist
2001; Kristiansen 2001; Ladegaard 2001, in
their studies of varieties of Danish). As we
move from matched guise to these more in-
dividualised representative aural presenta-
tions, the gains in reduced contrivance are
arguably offset by the presence of more of
the very interfering idiosyncratic variables
that the MGT seeks to avoid, thus making it
hard to favour universally one approach
over the other. Other criticisms have been
made of the MGT, including: controlling the
effects of, say, prosodic and paralinguistic
features may mean that other characteristics
that tend to belong to accent varieties (e.g.
intonation characteristics) are also elimin-
ated. Again, mimicked accents can contain
considerable inaccuracies (Preston 1996).
Some further criticisms also extend to some
verbal guise studies: e.g. the repeated mess-
age content of a reading passage may make
speech/language much more salient than it
otherwise is outside the experimental en-
vironment (Lee 1971); reading texts aloud is
likely to produce a relatively formal speech
style compared to spontaneous speech (see
Labov 1972); and the notion of a ‘factually
neutral’ text is undoubtedly questionable
(Giles/Coupland/Henwood et al. 1990).
Furthermore, we are not always sure how re-
liably judges have perceived the manipulated
variables – e.g. Bradac (1990) asks whether
the manipulated variable ‘non-standard ac-
cent’ might be misperceived as ‘bad gram-
mar’? (see Levin/Giles/Garrett 1994 for an
instance of such an association). Finally, re-
garding vocal presentations generally, (Pre-
ston 1989, 3) argues that in many attitudinal
studies of geographical variation we cannot
always be sure that the judges identify each
speaker as coming from a separate speech
area, or as being representative of it, since
usually no such data is elicited. – Less
strictly controlled modes of vocal presenta-
tion, for example, where different speakers
are recorded speaking spontaneously in or-
der for the researchers to present a number
of accents, arguably allow us to investigate
effects from a wider range of individual
speech characteristics of each speaker.
Choice of grammar, lexis, and idiom, use of
1254
hesitations, pauses, repetition, laughter,
topic, self-evaluative meta-talk, etc. might be
influencing informants’ evaluations as much
as accent does. In their study of attitudes to
New Zealand English and Standard Ameri-
can English, Ray/Zahn (1999) found that,
overall, paralinguistic features had a greater
impact than accent. Use of several different
speakers for the presentation of each accent
may reduce such effects, but in practice this
can mean lengthening the evaluation task
and causing fatigue effects. Again we see
how the choice of methods offsets one set of
problems against inheriting another. – One
might argue that a strength of ‘conceptual’
presentations, therefore, is that they do not
rely on listeners identifying a voice in the
way that the researchers intend. Instead, the
identification is done for the informant
(thus making vocal representation anyway
unnecessary). But this brings with it the dif-
ficulty of knowing what speech features (if
any) respondents are associating with the la-
bels they are given, and where they locate
such varieties on their mental maps – e.g.
where and over how large an area do they
believe ‘Birmingham English’ is spoken? As-
sociations are simply assumed in most cases
(although perceptual dialectological ap-
proaches can address this issue). However,
some features of speech and conversation,
which can be manipulated in the MGT, such
as speech rate, pitch, or accommodation, are
difficult or impossible to present conceptually
in any reliable way. – A further form of presen-
tation, less commonly employed, and perhaps
bridging direct and indirect approaches ac-
cording to how it is implemented, is the vi-
gnette. Vignettes are (usually written) scen-
arios, constituting a short description of a
person or social situation. They contain spe-
cific references to what are thought by the re-
searcher to be the main factors in respondents’
decision making or judgement making pro-
cesses (Alexander/Becker 1978). For example,
in Williams’ (1996) study of attitudes to in-
tergenerational accommodation, respondents
evaluated participants in a written vignette de-
scribing a dialogue between two women in a
coffee shop. The participants were described
in one version of the scenario as close in age
(20 and 25 years old), and in the other as more
distant in age (25 and 70 years old). By such
standardising of detail across respondents, vi-
gnettes are deemed to produce more valid and
reliable response measures than the concep-
tual presentation employed in most direct
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VII. Sociolinguistic Methodology
methods, such as survey questionnaires and
interviews (Alexander/Becker 1978). They
also enable a wide range of situation charac-
teristics to be manipulated, although the
written format precludes the presentation of
many of the language features typical of MGT
studies (e.g. accent). The idealisation involved
in constructing vignettes, however, removes
them from the domain of everyday behaviour.
5. Attitudinal response gathering
General difficulties in the gathering of re-
sponses are well-documented (e.g. Baker 1988;
1992; Oppenheim 1992; Perloff 1993). A few
of the main ones are included here. Some re-
late to the formulation of questions in inter-
views and questionnaires, and are primarily
relevant to direct approach studies. These in-
clude the use of hypothetical questions, which
tend to be poor predictors of future behaviour
when the phenomenon is actually encountered
(e.g. Breckler 1984), the use of strongly
‘loaded’ questions, which tend to influence
people towards a particular response, and the
use of multiple questions, where a positive
answer can refer to more than one component
of the question, or where there is a double
negative which would make a negative re-
sponse ambiguous. Other difficulties concern
common tendencies in respondents that re-
searchers need to be on their guard for when
collecting data. Some may affect both direct
and indirect approaches. Firstly, social desir-
ability bias. Cook/Sellitz (1964, 39), working
in the US, reported that people are often moti-
vated to give replies that make them appear
‘well-adjusted, unprejudiced, rational, open-
minded, and democratic’. One reason for
guaranteeing anonymity to respondents is to
reduce the risk of such bias. It is generally
deemed of greater significance in interviews
than in questionnaires (Oppenheim 1992,
126), and logically one might expect the
greatest risk of social desirability bias with
grouped respondents (e.g. focus group inter-
views) where individual anonymity is absent.
Secondly, respondents may tend to agree with
an item, regardless of its content, as a way of
gaining the researcher’s approval. This aqui-
escence bias (Ostrom/Bond/Krosnik et al.
1994) can occur in response to either ques-
tionnaire or interview items, but is claimed
by some to be especially pronounced in oral
face-to-face interviews (Gass/Seiter 1999,
45). Social desirability and acquiesence are
features that are likely to impact on some at-
124. Attitude Measurements
titudes, and some people, more than others.
It may be that they have greater effect where
the issues are of some personal or socio-
political sensitivity. These are features that
can prevent researchers tapping into the ‘pri-
vate attitudes’ of respondents (Lambert’s
motivation for using the MGT ). Thirdly, the
validity of data may be affected by qualities
of the researchers themselves, for example in
terms of power and solidarity attributes
(Wolfson 1976), perceived partiality (Dun-
nette/Heneman 1956), ethnic differences
(Bellin/Matsuyama/Schott 1999), and the
language chosen for conducting research in
bilingual or multilingual contexts (Price/
Fluck/Giles 1983). Finally, evaluations may
be influenced by allowing or encouraging
discussion prior to the completion of ques-
tionnaires, through the group polarisation
phenomenon (Myers/Lamm 1976), which
posits that groups make people more ex-
treme (though not directionally different) in
their judgements. For example, Giles/Harri-
son/Creber et al. (1983) found significant at-
titudinal differences when respondents were
given time to discuss the questionnaire be-
fore completion. A similar phenomenon was
found by Alderfer (1968) when the re-
searcher preceded questionnaire completion
with an interview. – Evaluative responses are
collected through a range of techniques. At
the broadest level, following Henerson/Mor-
ris/Fitz-Gibbon (1987), we may classify
these under the headings ‘Word of Mouth’
and ‘Written Response’ procedures. To some
extent, the choices for any study may be se-
verely restricted by the nature of the respon-
dents and context. For example, respon-
dents may lack literacy in the language used
(e.g. in the case of deciding whether to use
questionnaires with children, or foreign spea-
kers), or the best understood language for
data collection may have no written script.
Beyond constraints such as these, decisions
may depend on methodological preferences.
Word of mouth procedures can allow more
interaction between researcher and respon-
dent, and thereby facilitate better respon-
se rates, and clarification of ambiguities.
Written response procedures can allow more
anonymity and uniformity, the avoidance of
interviewer effects, and the possibility of
collecting data from a greater number of re-
spondents in a shorter time. In other ways,
the procedures have much in common. Both
can include open as well as closed items,
structured or unstructured formats. Both
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1255
can in principle be conducted at a distance
(e.g. with telephone interviews). Both can
generate nominal and ordinal data, though
where ranking involves larger numbers of
items, word of mouth procedures are prob-
lematic because of memory loads. In prin-
ciple at least, interval data can also be
sought through written or oral response.
Most commonly, language attitudes studies
have collected written response interval data
recorded on Likert or semantic differential
scales, the former associated with direct ap-
proach studies, and the latter seen as a more
or less integral component of MGT studies.
Likert scales are prepared by assembling a
number of statements about the attitude to
be measured, and giving them to a sample of
respondents to rate how far they agree or
disagree with them. The statements are
ideally gathered from pilot work with re-
spondents comparable to those anticipated
for the main study. There is a balance of
positive and negative statements, and re-
sponses are scored on a scale of, say, 1 to 7.
Taking into account the directionality of
each scale, summation of scores on related
statements provides a single score for each
respondent. Factor analysis is often used on
such scale ratings in order to identify
multidimensionality. For example, conduct-
ing a factor analysis on a number of attitude
statements formulated around attitude to
Welsh may identify subcomponents, with
some statements perhaps factoring into atti-
tudes towards learning Welsh, others into
attitudes towards Welsh speakers, or to-
wards the Welsh language. In practice, re-
searchers often prefer to have at least four
statements tapping into each attitudinal
subcomponent, with two negative, and two
positive. Usually, pilot ratings are again ga-
thered and a rotation factor analysis is con-
ducted to check correlations among the four
items in each attitudinal subcomponent,
and between the items and the total for each
attitudinal component (e.g. Garrett/Grif-
fiths/James et al. 1994). – Semantic differen-
tial scales were developed by Osgood and his
colleagues in the 1950s (Osgood/Suci/Tan-
nenbaum 1957), who established early that
the use of such scales with a wide variety of
attitude objects produced ratings that corre-
late into three main dimensions, often ab-
breviated to EPA : evaluation, potency, and
activity. Zahn/Hopper (1985) have empiri-
cally validated these same dimensions in
language attitudes research as, respectively,
1256
social attractiveness, superiority, and dyna-
mism. The (typically 7-point) scales are
bounded by bipolar adjectives. In MGT
studies, respondents are usually asked to
rate the speakers on a number of such scales,
and measurement overlap is then analysed
to identify the broader evaluative dimen-
sions with which the respondents are operat-
ing. – The well-documented pattern of
evaluative dimensions has meant that in
many instances language attitudes studies
have selected their scales from those used in
previous studies, while others have supple-
mented them with scales from their own pre-
liminary work with comparable judges (e.g.
Nesdale/Rooney 1996) or based them all on
such preparatory work (e.g. Price/Fluck/
Giles 1983; Paltridge/Giles 1984). The prob-
lem with restricting scales to those used in
previous studies is that it may induce some
circularity and hence also give a deceptive
semblance of exhaustiveness. Heise (1970,
236ff.), discussing the EPA dimensions in
general attitudes research, while encourag-
ing adjective selection from previously pub-
lished factor analyses, conceded that addi-
tional dimensions are found in some studies.
It seems premature in the relatively new field
of language attitudes research to assume
that other dimensions are of no import.
Coupland/Williams/Garrett 1999, for ex-
ample, found a separate dimension of Welsh-
ness that was a powerful independent dis-
criminator amongst the different varieties of
Welsh English. A further issue in relation to
the choice of lexical items for semantic dif-
ferential scales is that they must be in a para-
digmatic relationship of opposites in a
paired system, with each member of the pair
at opposite ends of a continuum. Hence, in
any preliminary study gathering sponta-
neous items for later use in creating sem-
antic differential scales, responses that are
not gradable along a scale have to be
discarded. Those without unambiguous
antonyms are also often ignored, but are
sometimes rescued through the use of unidi-
rectional scales, as long as they are gradable:
e.g. irritating / not at all irritating. However,
items discarded in this way may constitute a
valuable ‘discursive shorthand’, providing
insights into respondents’ attitudes that
semantic differential scales miss, and indeed
may send out unmistakable impressions of
directionality and intensity too, even if they
cannot provide interval data for statistical
analysis.
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VII. Sociolinguistic Methodology
One question common to both Likert and
semantic differential scales concerns the
number of points on the scale. Although Li-
kert (1932) himself proposed a 5 point scale,
researchers have tended to prefer 7 point
scales for the increased variance that such
longer scales allow, since these are sensitive
to smaller differences in measurement. The
mid-point which such scales allow often cre-
ates ambiguity (Oppenheim 1992, 200); they
might reflect an uncertain response to an
issue the respondent feels little involvement
towards, or they might reflect a much-con-
sidered commitment to a mid-position. On
the other hand, the solution preferred by
some researchers of having an even number
of points, thus forcing respondents to com-
mit themselves to one direction or the other,
is also controversial, since, for example, it
denies respondents the possibility of ex-
pressing a considered commitment to a mid-
point. The debate to some extent under-
mines the claim that scales are useful for
measuring the intensity of attitudes, with the
ends of the scales showing greater intensity.
This is certainly a claim that has been con-
tested (e.g. Weksel/Hennes 1965). Generally,
researchers have tended to use 5 or 7 point
scales and to live with the ambiguity of the
mid-point. – Rating scales have sometimes
been replaced or augmented by behavioural
measures. Giles/Baker/Fielding (1975), for
instance, asked school students to write
open-endedly what they thought psychology
was about, delivering this request in differ-
ent accents to different groups. The number
of words written was taken as a measure of
favourability. Giles/Farrar (1979), compar-
ing the attitudinal effects of accent and
dress-style, analysed responses on the sub-
ject of effects of inflation both by calculat-
ing communication length (number of words
written) and by assessing the relative for-
mality of style used in the written responses.
Bourhis/Giles (1976) – comparing attitudes
towards the Welsh language, broad and mild
South Welsh-accented English, and Receiv-
ed Pronunciation – and Kristiansen (1997) –
comparing attitudes towards four accents of
Danish (standard, Copenhagen, broad and
mild Zealand) – counted the number of the-
atre audience members who responded to
public address system announcements de-
livered in the different language varieties.
The number of completed questionnaires
was calculated as a proportion of total ticket
sales, and the results were taken to indicate
124. Attitude Measurements
comparative attitudes to the different lan-
guage varieties. This approach is indirect in
the sense that respondents are not aware of
the purpose of the research, and it is less
likely that they will respond on the basis of
social acceptability. However, it is not poss-
ible to infer from such behaviour alone the
broader attitudinal profile of such varieties
in terms of a set of evaluative dimensions,
such as ‘superiority’, ‘social attractiveness’
and ‘dynamism’. – As a recent but influen-
tial new paradigm, perceptual dialectologi-
cal studies have used a variety of other
measures (see Preston 1999b for a sum-
mary). Typically though, respondents draw
dialect boundaries on a blank or minimally
detailed map where they believe regional
speech zones exist. They then rank the areas
for specific features such as correctness,
pleasantness (e.g. Preston 1989), or rate
each region on semantic differential scales
(e.g. Preston 1999a; Coupland/Williams/
Garrett 1994), or give labels of their own
formulation to these areas. Williams/Gar-
rett/Coupland (1996), for example, asked re-
spondents to both write labels they would
use for each of the areas they delineated, and
provide written characterisations of each
dialect according to what they found dis-
tinctive about them. The data were found to
have stereotypical evaluative content, and,
through content analysis, characterisations
were found to spread with differentiating
frequencies across a number of coding cat-
egories (e.g. linguistic features, positive or
negative affective features, Welshness or
non-Welshness) to give each variety its own
distinctive evaluative profile.
6. Current issues and directions
Much recent language attitudes research has
pursued perceptual dialectological and folk-
linguistic approaches (see Preston 1989;
1999c; Niedzielski/Preston 2000). Hence for
the most part, it has focused on attitudes to
geographically based varieties, though also
incorporating standard varieties even where
these are primarily social rather than re-
gional varieties. Such work has helped to ad-
dress one of the limitations of earlier re-
search, as expressed in particular by Price/
Fluck/Giles (1983) in relation to Wales.
MGT studies in particular tended to be one-
off relatively small-scale and very localised
investigations that did not always allow re-
searchers to gain insights into the broader
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1257
geographical picture, and indeed at times
produced seemingly inconsistent patterns of
results across studies (see Coupland/Williams/
Garrett 1994 on the Welsh context). Conse-
quently, there has been a trend towards col-
lecting comparable data from a number of lo-
cations over a whole area to investigate not
only the general area-wide attitudes to spe-
cific varieties within that area, but also how
attitudes to the varieties compare amongst
the various local communities within the
broader area. This has been a growing focus
of attitudes research in the U.S. (e.g. Pre-
ston’s 1989 studies of the perceptions of U.S.
regional dialects of southern Indiana and
Michigan residents, and Hartley’s 1999
study of the perceptions in Oregon), in Den-
mark (e.g. Ladegaard 2001, on perceptions
of regional standard Danishes), and in
Wales (e.g. Garrett/Coupland/Williams
1999), where teachers and teenagers from all
over Wales evaluated each other’s regional
dialects of English). Other such areal studies
have been conducted in France, Germany,
Japan, and Turkey (see Preston 1999c).
Alongside this development is a growing
trend (not totally absent earlier – e.g. Giles
1970) towards collecting and comparing dif-
ferent types of data within a single study.
Ladegaard (2001), for instance, presented
audiorecorded speech samples of regional
standard varieties of Danish to his respon-
dents, and asked them, amongst other
things, for an appropriate label for each var-
iety they heard, and their immediate impres-
sion of the speaker. Both data sets produced
attitudinal data. Hoare (2001) used a combi-
nation of direct and indirect techniques, and
supplemented quantitative data with discur-
sive responses, to investigate language atti-
tudes and identity in Brittany. In their study
of attitudes to Welsh English dialects, Coup-
land/Williams/Garrett (1994), Williams/
Garrett/Coupland (1996), and Garrett/
Coupland/Williams (1999) collected data
from perceptual mapping and labelling
tasks, scales and open-ended data from con-
ceptual and audio presented dialects, and
data from small group interviews. Gathering
several types of data, though carrying the
same risk of throwing up a confusion of
contradictory results that Price/Fluck/Giles
(1983) bemoaned, is tending to build up a
richer and more solid view and understand-
ing of attitudes and their attributions than
reliance on earlier techniques achieved. Col-
lecting qualitative data alongside the usual
1258
scales data can facilitate deeper insights into
the cultural processes at work beneath the
evaluative scores attributed to each variety
along the various attitudinal dimensions.
This in turn can afford a clearer view of the
relative importances of the attitudinal di-
mensions to respondent groups in various
contexts, the nature of regional rivalries and
affiliations, and of struggles for socio-politi-
cal and cultural maintenance and change.
Comparing results across different types of
data can also bring valuable methodological
benefits for attitude measurement. For
example, some recent studies have found, as
did Giles (1970), that presenting language
varieties ‘conceptually’ or as audio-record-
ings does not necessarily lead to any signifi-
cant difference in findings (e.g. Preston
1999c, 369). This reinforces the point made
earlier that, given the above-mentioned is-
sues around the construction of MGT
audio-recordings, indirect methods are like-
ly to be most useful in contexts where the at-
titudes under study are particularly fraught
with sensitivities. Furthermore, where the
use of semantic differential scales has pro-
duced results different from those gained
from open-ended characterising of dialects,
important methodological questions have
been raised about the whether ‘private’ atti-
tudes are more likely to relate to this aspect
of study design rather than (or as much as)
the use of conceptual versus audio-recorded
presentations (Garrett/Coupland/Williams
1995). – Finally, effects on language and
communication often attributed to late mo-
dernity are suggesting some tantalising new
focal points for language attitudes research.
Traditionally labelled ‘standard’ speech var-
ieties may now be losing their uniquely posi-
tive evaluations. ‘Levelled’ and less main-
stream varieties may be judged more
favourably (Kerswill/Williams 2000). More-
over, Kristiansen (2001) shows the emerg-
ence of more than one standard Danish,
each favoured in different professional con-
texts (media versus education and business)
and differentiated largely on measurements
of dynamism. The growth of service sector
industries in many regions, customer care
lines and telesales, where impression man-
agement is paramount (Cameron 2000), may
mean less advantage for varieties mainly
strong on prestige measurements. Hitherto
neglected dimensions (most notably,
McCroskey/Teven’s 1999 ‘perceived caring’
dimension) warrant measurement in such
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VII. Sociolinguistic Methodology
evolving service-oriented contexts. The gen-
eral loosening of socio-structural norms
that is associated with late modernity
(Giddens 1994) may present new directions
for attitude measurement.
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