Language Attitudes in a Lingua Franca: The Case of Black South African College Students

Abstract

In a context of transformation where South African students have started to confront issues of alienation and access to higher education institutions, the role of language is not a minor issue. This study explores the implicit language attitudes of a sample of 80 young L1 South African indigenous language speakers toward Standard South African English and black accented English in a university context. In using a mixed-methodological approach that investigates the interrelation between participants’ Implicit Association Test (IAT) results toward the two selected accents and their linguistic background, language exposure, and social distance levels, this study found mixed results with important sociolinguistic implications. More specifically, the notion of intersectionality (race and gender), the relevant role of the language of instruction in the development of language attitudes, and further correlations between the above-mentioned sociolinguistic variables provided valuable insight with significant social implications as well as methodological considerations.