engleski

Matched guise technique revisited: Zagreb case study

This paper analyses the results obtained by applying the matched guise technique to research into the attitudes of speakers from linguistically heterogeneous larger urban areas towards different varieties. The expected results indicate that members of a particular language community will rate speakers of the standard variety significantly higher in the dimension of social status, but much lower in the dimension of social solidarity, while the opposite will apply to speakers of the local variety. A representative sample of Zagreb high-school students was tested for attitudes towards the standard variety and urban varieties of Zagreb by applying a matched guise test. The results show that a part of the sample population rated the speaker of Standard Croatian much higher on solidarity than the speaker of the local variety, while both speakers were rated the same on status. It is concluded that in this area the matched guise technique achieves expected results when used to examine smaller and linguistically homogenous environments, while results obtained in bigger urban environments deviate from those expected due to the impact of certain sociolinguistic variables.

matched guise technique, language attitudes, Standard Croatian, Zagreb vernacular, sociolinguistic analysis

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