Geographical and linguistic attitude survey of dialects among grammar school students in Pécs

This research project has investigated the attitude of grammar school students in Pécs towards dialects. This study has been carried out by involving 192 students in the modified matched guise technique, focusing on the effect of geographic factors on students’ judgement of language variations. According to the preliminary hypotheses, the attitude towards dialects is unanimously judgmental, whereas negative opinion is significantly dominant in case of cognitive factors. Results also show that students who live in villages have a less negative opinion about the dialect speaker than those who come from towns. Contrary to the assumptions, the positive image of the Hungarian village does not influence the discriminative attitude towards the dialect and its speaker.

Keywords: standard language, linguistic discrimination, linguistic attitude(s), dialect, settlement type