Discourse as a resource

Abstract

Abstract Language attitudes have frequently been included in investigations of language shift, language maintenance, second language acquisition and bilingualism. Speakers’ attitudes about and towards such language issues contribute toward the planning and provision of language services and education in the speech community. The data gathering methods adopted for the collection of speakers’ language attitudes usually consist of sociolinguistic questionnaires and/or social psychological matched guise experiments. In this paper I will present some exploratory ideas about discourse analysis as a method for the collection and analysis of language attitudes. The data for the investigation is a series of group negotiations among female and male speakers from Anglo-Australian and Greek-Australian backgrounds. The speakers were participating in group ‘negotiations’ discussing various issues of language planning and policy in an Australian context.