Attitudes towards the minority variety Caló in the south of Spain : a sociolinguistic study

Caló is a variety spoken by the Spanish Calé (i.e. the Roma). It belongs to a group of languages referred to as “Para-Romani”, characterized by Romani vocabulary, but largely non-Romani morphology, phonology and syntax, in the case of Caló deriving from Spanish. According to previous research carried out – with focus on the vocabulary and the grammar of this variety – Caló is on its way to extinction. However, there is an expressed interest in reintroducing a form called “Romanó-Caló”. Attitudes play an important role in minority language maintenance as well as in order for a revitalization project to be successful. The aim of this study is to measure the attitudes that both Calé and non-Calé have towards Caló and Caló speakers, a type of study never carried out in the past. The methods applied are both direct and indirect. In total, 231 informants listened to different recordings of voices acting as either a “Spanish speaking person” or a “Caló speaking person”, a technique referred to as ‘matched guise’, answering questions related to the voices on attitude scales. Furthermore, 182 of the informants rated their agreement or disagreement to positive and negative items towards Caló and its speakers on a Likert scale. The results of the analysis indicate that the attitudes differ towards Caló and Caló speakers, depending on the informant’s (a) ethnicity (b) contact with Caló as well as with Caló speakers, and (c) gender. It is those who – in their own opinion – belong to the ethnic group Calé, as well as those who claim that they have some contact with the variety and its speakers, who show positive attitudes in both parts of the study. The women also show more positive attitudes than the men. It is also possible to note positive attitudes towards the variety and its speakers among the subjects with a high level of knowledge of Caló words, as well as among those with the highest willingness to use Caló. These observations suggest that a revitalization project of the variety Caló has a clear chance of being successful.

Actitudes hacia el catalán : un estudio sociolingüístico de principiantes del catalán en Barcelona

This study focuses on the Catalan language of Catalonia, a region located in the east of Spain. There are many immigrants living in this region who decide to learn the Catalan language in hope of finding a job or to integrate in the Catalan society. The main aim of this study was to discover the types of language attitudes the beginners of Catalan show towards this language (general, instrumental and integrative attitudes). Language attitudes are of importance because it can indicate the “health” of a minority language, such as is usually considered Catalan. The method applied was direct, where the informants had to answer a written questionnaire. The results of the study show positive attitudes towards the Catalan language and its general use in Catalonia. The main conclusions of the study were that the informants showed positive and slightly more instrumental attitudes towards Catalan, indicating that the main motive of learning the language was more of practical use than integrative motives.

Actitudes hacia el castellano y el catalán : Un estudio sociolingüístico entre veinteañeros y sus padres en el ámbito

This study focuses on the attitudes toward Catalan and Spanish, the two main languages spoken in Barcelona, on the East coast of Spain, in Southwestern Europe. The aim of this study was to compare those attitudes between two generations of informants. The informants of one generation were born 1984-93 and were thus in their twenties at the time of the investigation, in 2013. The aforementioned generation was labelled with the name "Children", whereas their parents were labelled with the name "Parents". The method applied was direct, where the informants had to answer an online survey, and the number of informants that were studied was 15 for each generation, or 30 in total. The conclusion of the study, derived from the results to the aforementioned survey, is that the generation of the Children have a more positive attitude toward Catalan and more negative toward Spanish than the generation of the Parents.

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.