The Attitudinal Factor in Language Planning

A number of researchers have argued that speakers' attitudes mediate the outcome of language-planning measures. This study aims to contribute to the literature by exploring the role of attitudes in purism, a language-planning orientation which seeks to preserve a language from putative foreign items. More specifically, the study focuses on Valencian, a dialect of Catalan spoken in eastern Spain. The colloquial register of this variety is heavily Castilianized at the lexical level, despite two decades of governmental action aimed at reducing the number of Spanish borrowings (also known as Castilianisms).

A strong relationship between Valencian speakers' attitudes and their linguistic behavior (i.e., their use of either Castilianisms or native equivalents) would direct local planners to heed speakers' attitudes as a prerequisite to the success of lexical de-Castilianization. The author analyzes attitudinal and behavioral data from 80 Valencian-speaking subjects and discusses the implications of the results for language planning in the area.

The author earned a PhD degree in Hispanic Linguistics from Indiana University in 2005. His main research areas are Sociolinguistics, Language Planning, Language and the Law, and Second Language Acquisition. Dr. Triano López is currently an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he also served as Director of Language Instruction of the Basic Language Program in Spanish.