Language attitudes, matched-guise technique and the Czech language

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of empirical research on language attitudes. In the first part, some of the up-to-date investigations of attitudes towards Czech are discussed.

The second part introduces the matched-guise technique to Czech linguistics and points out some examples of how this technique has been used and modified. Criticism of this technique is mentioned briefly.

In the third part, the possibilities of implementing the matched-guise technique using Czech material are considered (e.g. the difference in the evaluation of different items of one variety; the difference in the evaluation in different situational contexts; language attitudes and code-mixing/code-switching in Czech; the issue of language discrimination).

Keywords

• empirical research
• language attitudes
• language discrimination
• matched-guise technique
• Wallace Lambert