Research into attitudes to code-switching has frequently produced very negative and ambivalent perceptions, not only by outsiders but also by insiders. This study aims mainly to investigate the way people from different age groups and school settings evaluate major spoken varieties in the State of Kuwait. School students (14-18 years) in schools of different educational schemes (government, English and bilingual schools) were recorded telling stories of personal experiences to ingroup community members (same age group, gender and school type) in their normal way of everyday speech styles. A number of those stories were selected to represent three main spoken language varieties in Kuwait (Kuwaiti-only, English-only and Kuwaiti/English code-switching analysed into two representative types: intersentential and lexical code-switching). Teenagers drawn from the various investigated school settings (n = 417) and a group of teachers (n = 88) rated the audio-recorded speakers on a number of scales of solidarity, status, communicative and culture-based (religiousness, Kuwaitiness and conservativeness) traits in order to explore the evaluative profiles that different groups of people have towards the investigated language varieties in the country. The study revealed some strongly differentiated evaluative profiles by the various groups of respondents based on their school type, age group, gender, and for code-switching specifically, as a result of the code-switched typology. Encountering some ambiguous results, the study maintains the need for qualitative measures, not only as a separate data in their own right (focus group interviews), but also to be included within the modified matched-guise questionnaire (open ended questions). Unlike previous attitudinal studies on code-switching, the current study reveals some very positive attitudes towards the speech style, particularly by those who practise it, and specifically along cultural attributes, as a result of the differing ideologies nurtured within the three school types.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:584151 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Akbar, Rahima |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55661/ |
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