This study explores the effects of socio-economic background on attitudes towards L2 motivation within Gardner's (e.g. 1985, 2000, 2001, 2002) Integrative Motivation framework. Recent findings by Dörnyei & Csizér (2002) and Csizér & Dörnyei (2005) have cast doubt on the explanatory power of 'integrativeness' for monolingual contexts of language learning. While the authors propose a reformulation of the concept based on the learners' construction of "possible selves", this thesis stresses the need to delve deeper into the origins of such representations to better understand FL learners' attitudes and motivation. Socio-economic background is thus proposed as a potentially fruitful avenue of investigation. Despite the current emphasis on contextualized motivation (Clément & Gardner 2001, Dörnyei 2001b, Gardner 2002, McGroarty 1998, 2001, Spolsky 2000), and strong indications from sociology about the impact of social stratification on human behavior (Grusky 1994), no systematic empirical work shows how socio-economic status may impinge upon FL motivation. To investigate the socio-economic dimension of motivation, two questionnaires were designed based (1) on Gardner's (1985) AMTB and (2) on Bourdieu's (1986) tripartite conceptualization of capital. Parental occupation was also used as an additional measure of socio-economic level. Both questionnaires were administered among 39 fourth-graders (9-10 years of age) enrolled in EFL intensive classes in six public so-called Plurilingual Schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Though not conclusive or generalizable due to the reduced pool of respondents and the novel testing conditions and instruments, this study gives some evidence in support of a predictive role of economic capital and parental occupation on motivation. Overall, more economically disadvantaged EFL learners showed more positive attitudes towards the benefits of learning English to attain present and future goals, and they were more generally motivated to learn the language as well. Possible interpretations of these results in light of Bourdieu's 'habitus' as well as the potential effects of parental expectations and performance anxiety are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04192005-163359 |
| Date | 07 June 2005 |
| Creators | Lifrieri, Verónica |
| Contributors | Alan Juffs, Ph.D., Robert DeKeyser, Ph.D., Scott F. Kiesling, Ph.D. |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04192005-163359/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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