Measuring language attitudes in context: Exploring the potential of the Personalized Implicit Association Test

After decades of relative methodological stagnation, language attitude research is witnessing an influx of new experimental methods originally developed in social psychology. One such measure is the Personalized Implicit Association Test (P-IAT), a reaction-time-based method that measures the associ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLanguage in society Vol. 48; no. 3; pp. 429 - 461
Main Authors Rosseel, Laura, Speelman, Dirk, Geeraerts, Dirk
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.06.2019
Subjects
Attitudes
Context
Customization
Dutch language
Implicit beliefs
Influence
Language attitudes
Language tests
Language varieties
Measurement
Perceptions
Psychology
Reaction time
Social psychology
Social research
Sociolinguistics
Speaking
Stagnation
Standard dialects
Tests
Belgium
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Summary:After decades of relative methodological stagnation, language attitude research is witnessing an influx of new experimental methods originally developed in social psychology. One such measure is the Personalized Implicit Association Test (P-IAT), a reaction-time-based method that measures the association between two concepts. The P-IAT has been used successfully to measure language attitudes, yet presents a number of challenges, like the fact that it measures attitudes void of linguistic or interactional context. This article aims to address that challenge and introduces a contextualized version of the P-IAT, which was used alongside an explicit measurement to explore attitudes towards varieties of Dutch in formal vs. informal settings. While the explicit attitudes show the expected pattern of preference for the standard variety in formal contexts, results from the implicit measurement are not as clear-cut. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and reflect on consequences for future sociolinguistic research using the P-IAT. (Personalized Implicit Association Test (P-IAT), context dependence of language attitudes, sociolinguistics)*
ISSN:0047-4045
1469-8013
DOI:10.1017/S0047404519000198