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Evaluational reactions to spoken French and English in Montreal: Does mother tongue really matter?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2016

Elke Laur
Elke Laur*
Affiliation:
Montreal, Canada
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Abstract

Montreal became famous in socio-psychological and sociohnguistic circles half a century ago, when a group of researchers—Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fil-lenbaum — invented a new methodology to measure speech evaluations indirectly. They came up with an innovative technique, called matched guise, which allows researchers to access subjects’ reactions without asking for their opinions directly or doing extensive field work. In 2004, another matched guise study of the evaluational reactions of Montrealers added new aspects to the original methodological design in order to test some of its limits. The fundamental methodological difference was to include members of different language groups in a representative sample of the population of Montreal so that multivariate analysis could determine the extent to which belonging to a specific linguistic group could actually account for reactions to spoken language. This analysis reveals that some earlier interpretations should be realigned.

Résumé

Résumé

Montréal est devenu célèbre dans le monde de la psychologie sociale et de la sociolinguistique lorsque, il y a un demi-siècle, un groupe de chercheurs—Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner et Fillenbaum — a inventé une nouvelle méthodologie capable de mesurer indirectement des évaluations linguistiques. Cette technique innovatrice, appelée technique du locuteur masqué (ou faux-couple), permet aux chercheurs d’accéder aux évaluations sans poser des questions directement et sans se livrer à des terrains ethnographiques complexes. En 2004, une autre étude utilisant la technique du locuteur masqué a exploité de nouveaux aspects dans l’approche méthodologique initiale afin de tester certaines de ses limites. La différence fondamentale consistait en l’inclusion de plusieurs groupes linguistiques dans un échantillon représentatif de la population de Montréal pour que des analyses multivariées puissent déterminer à quel degré l’appartenance à un groupe linguistique spécifique peut effectivement expliquer les évaluations linguistiques. Cette analyse indique que certaines interprétations antérieures devraient être reajustées.

Keywords

linguistic attitudeslinguistic perceptionsMontrealmatched guisespeech evaluationattitudes linguistiquesperceptions linguistiquesMontréalfaux-couplelocuteur masquéévaluation linguistique
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 59 , Issue 1: Pratiques langagières et idèologies linguistiques en contexte urbain: Les communautès linguistiques de Montrèal | Language practices and linguistic ideologies in urban settings: Speech communities in Montreal , March 2014 , pp. 3 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 2015

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