Homework 4

Homework #4

Due by 10:10 on Monday, 24 February 2020

Answer the following questions about "Language with an Attitude", Dennis Preston.

1. What folklinguistic link between languages and their speakers does Preston propose?

2. Why is it difficult to elicit language attitudes and what methods have been developed to deal with these problems?

3. What are some of the most stable findings of such studies?

4. How does the concept of iconicity help explain some of the explanatory problems of attitude studies?

5. Are all linguistic features equally important in marking social identity?

6. What does Preston mean when he says that the clines of folkloristic fact are independent?

7. Why is it important to find out about respondents' mental maps?

8. What steps are suggested in preparing an attitude study?

9. Considering Table 7.4, what attributes are used by informants to describe Michigan and southern speech and why are they evaluated like this?

10. How and why do Northerners and Southerners differ when rating all US states for correctness and pleasantness?

11. What is the basis of Preston's folk theory?

12. How can overt fold comments reveal underlying facts about folk beliefs?

13. What should linguists studying language attitudes focus on?

(Questions from The Routledge Sociolinguistics Reader, eds. Meyerhoff and Schleef)