Actitudes hacia el murciano : Un estudio comparativo de actitudes que presentan nativosmurcianos e hispanohablantes no peninsulares.

Murciano is a non-standard variety that is spoken in Murcia, a region in the southeast of Spain.This study aims to investigate which are the attitudes toward the variety from the dimensions ofsolidarity and status.We will use two groups of informants. One integrated by 20 natives from Murcia who use thevariety, and the other by 16 non-spanish-natives that have never been in contact with murciano.The intention with the study is to investigate which attitudes both groups show towardmurciano and analyse the differences and similarities between them. We expect the natives toshow positive attitudes in the dimension of solidarity, and negatives in the dimension of status.We expect the non-natives to show the same kind of attidudes toward both varieties (thestandard-spanish and murciano) while they have never been in contact with the non-standardand therefore should not have the sociocultural background that help people to create negativeattitudes toward non-standard varieties.The chosen method is an indirect one, and the used technique is the matched-guise. Theinformants listen to two different voices talking two times each: one in standard-spanish andone in murciano. After they have listened to one voice in one variety they answer 10 differentquestions to measure their attitudes in the both dimensions we aim to investigate. The resultsare analysed from the gender and the education variables.The results show that the natives attitudes toward murciano are positives from the solidaritydimension but negatives from the status one, results that confirm the first hypothesis. However,the study shows that the non-natives also have negative attitudes toward the variety in the statusdimension but positive toward the standard-spanish, which means that the second hypothesiswas wrong, something that could have been caused by the fact that all non-natives had a higheducational-level. Other studies show that education is a factor that can have a bearing onhaving negative attitudes toward non-standard varieties.

Estudio comparativo de las actitudes hacia elmurciano.

The aim of this study is to measure and analyse the attitudes towards a linguisticvariety called murciano. This variety is a regional standard of Spanish, namely, theSpanish talked in Murcia, a city located in the South of Spain.There are two groups of informants in this study. The first group is composed of12 people from Murcia and the second group consists of 12 people who know thevariety of murciano but are not natives from the city of Murcia. The methodapplied is the indirect method matched guise. The informants listened to fourdifferent recordings of voices acting as either a Spanish speaking person or amurciano speaking person. Ten short questions related with the voices were askedto the informants, who gave their answers on a Likert attitude scale.The results show that the attitudes towards murciano and the standard Spanishdiffer in both groups of informants. The group of natives from Murcia show morepositive attitudes toward the variety murciano than the group of non-natives fromMurcia. However, when the results towards the variety murciano and the standardSpanish are compared with each other, it is the standard Spanish the one thatreceives more positive valuations. In addition, the observations show that thegroup of non-natives from Murcia are more critical and negative in their attitudestoward the different linguistic varieties than the group of natives from Murcia.

Tourism and Arctic Observation Systems : exploring the relationships

The Arctic is affected by global environmental change and also by diverse interests from many economic sectors and industries. Over the last decade, various actors have attempted to explore the options for setting up integrated and comprehensive trans-boundary systems for monitoring and observing these impacts. These Arctic Observation Systems (AOS) contribute to the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of environmental change and responsible social and economic development in the Arctic. The aim of this article is to identify the two-way relationship between AOS and tourism. On the one hand, tourism activities account for diverse changes across a broad spectrum of impact fields. On the other hand, due to its multiple and diverse agents and far-reaching activities, tourism is also well-positioned to collect observational data and participate as an actor in monitoring activities. To accomplish our goals, we provide an inventory of tourism-embedded issues and concerns of interest to AOS from a range of destinations in the circumpolar Arctic region, including Alaska, Arctic Canada, Iceland, Svalbard, the mainland European Arctic and Russia. The article also draws comparisons with the situation in Antarctica. On the basis of a collective analysis provided by members of the International Polar Tourism Research Network from across the polar regions, we conclude that the potential role for tourism in the development and implementation of AOS is significant and has been overlooked.