Series | LiVVaL. Linguaggio e Variazione | Variation in Language
Edited book | Language Attitudes and Bi(dia)lectal Competence
Chapter | Students’ Attitudes and Opinions in a Context of Bilingualism with a Minority Language
Students’ Attitudes and Opinions in a Context of Bilingualism with a Minority Language
Italian and Sardinian Compared
Abstract
In this chapter, the results of an investigation on language attitudes towards Italian and Sardinian are presented. Attitudes are crucial in contexts of bilingualism or bilectalism, as they affect the possibilities of a minority language to survive. Students’ attitudes in Sardinia were studied with a direct method, i.e. a written questionnaire: participants had to express their degree of agreement on a Likert scale with statements concerning Italian and Sardinian. Results show that Italian is seen as the most prestigious language. Students gave generally favourable opinions on Sardinian and its private and public use as well, but they acknowledged its little instrumental importance. Proficiency and frequent use of Sardinian proved to relate with positive attitudes towards that language. Furthermore, high school students turned out to be more interested in the benefits of the majority language than students in the early adolescence. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Submitted: June 28, 2023 | Accepted: Dec. 28, 2023 | Published June 30, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Likert scale • Italian • Language opinions • Language attitudes • Direct method • Sardinian
Copyright © 2024 Piergiorgio Mura. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-802-6/006
