Linguistic Attitudes Toward Spanish Varieties

Abstract

Linguistic attitudes are extremely important because of their impact on issues such as linguistic variation and language change, the selection of a language in multilingual societies, language planning, language teaching, etc. In general terms, linguistic attitudes can be defined as the result of an appreciation and evaluation by the speakers since the languages carry social meanings and sentimental values. The present manuscript aims to identify the linguistic attitudes –positive or negative– of Korean students of Spanish as a foreign language toward the varieties of Spanish; the issue becomes interesting when there is a wide variety of alternatives of the same model of language such as Spanish. Although it is commonly known that the Castilian variety has a wider acceptance than other varieties, there are significant attitudes about the other Spanish varieties among Korean students and all this should also be taken into account by any professor of Spanish as a foreign language.