Are Attitudes Important?

Abstract

Given the discussion in the preceding chapter, and as a precursor to the specificities that will be found in the following one, this chapter considers whether or not attitudes are as important as some have made them out to be. None of the three chapters in this part of the book, however, provides any sort of comprehensive overview of attitude enquiries; I have already noted the large social-scientific literature bearing upon attitudes per se and, within that, there is also a sizeable body of work dealing with language perceptions and motivations. Some excellent recent surveys by Howard Giles and his colleagues can be recommended: see, for instance, Bradac et al. (2001), Garrett (2010), Garrett et al. (2003), Giles and Billings (2004), Giles et al. (2006) and, for a succinct discussion, Giles and Edwards (2010).