Children’s linguistic environments are shaped to a large degree by the parents’ beliefs and attitudes (Schwatz 2010:177)
As conceptual tools, language ideologies and language attitudes provide a means of treating speakers’ feelings and ideas about language and linguistic forms as a critical factor in understanding processes of language change, language and identity, and language in its socioeconomic context. Because definitions of both these concepts invoke notions of speakers’ feelings and beliefs about language structure or language use, the terms are usually conflated. However within the literature the concepts have different origins and significant differences in the way they encourage researchers to focus on distinctive aspects of similar phenomena. In addition they are associated with two different kinds of methodologies (Oxford Bibliographies Online).
Language attitudes, with its origins in social psychology, is generally associated with an objectivist concern with quantitative measurement of speakers’ reactions. In contrast, the concept of language ideologies, with is relationship to linguistic anthropology, is more associated with qualitative methods such as ethnography, conversational and discourse analysis (ibid).
For the purposes of my dissertation, I will adopt the definition of language ideologies as a set of normative beliefs about language, i.e it’s uses and value, and language attitudes are dispositions or orientations towards specific languages that are either favourable or unfavourable.