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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Laura Rosseel ,
Dirk Speelman  and
Dirk Geeraerts
Laura Rosseel*
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Belgium
Dirk Speelman
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Belgium
Dirk Geeraerts
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Belgium
*
Address for correspondence: Laura Rosseel KU Leuven Blijde-Inkomstraat 21-bus 3308 3000 Leuven, Belgiumlaura.rosseel@kuleuven.be
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Abstract

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)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , June 2019 , pp. 429 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a FWO fellowship held by the first author. We would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. Thanks also to Adriaan Spruyt for his helpful comments on the design of the study and to our respondents for their time and interest.

References

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