Language attitudes: sociolinguistic aspect

Abstract

Language attitudes are pivotal in shaping spheres of language use, impacting language change and policy. They reflect how communities perceive and value languages, influencing language choice, education, and social interactions. Studies on language attitudes explore preferences in language instruction, societal perceptions, and the potential for language discrimination. Positive attitudes can elevate language prestige, while negative ones may contribute to language decline. Loyalty to a language or a variety can resist influences from a dominant language, especially if a minority language prestige is high. The article comprises reviews on ‘language attitudes’ as a term, an overview of the history of research on the perceptions of a language, analysis of related changes occurring among speakers. The objective of the article is to provide a forecast for the future fate of Karelian, Kalmyk, and Yakut languages by analyzing language attitudes. The focus of the study was on the perceptions of a language held by members of a speech community, i.e., those who have no command of the studied language, as these perceptions were deemed highly significant. When the overall sentiment toward a language is positive, and speech community members recognize the importance of having at least a basic proficiency in it, the prospects for the language's growth appear promising. Such favorable attitudes may lead speech community members to actively encourage language study among their children or grandchildren or even decide to learn the language themselves later in life, creating a potentially fertile environment for a language to flourish.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.