Attitudes of Xitsonga L1 urban youth towards accents of the rural elderly

Abstract

The study of language attitudes is of special importance for the social psychology of language. Formal measurements of attitudes provide us with findings that could be used to predict the linguistic behaviour of members of a given social group in terms of their use of linguistic varieties in bilingual and bi-dialectal situations. This study investigated the attitudes of Xitsonga first language urban youth in Soshanguve towards the accents of the rural elderly in Giyani, as well as the attitudes of the Xitsonga L1 rural elderly in Giyani towards urban youth accents in Soshanguve. Forty urban youth and ten rural elderly respondents participated in the study, using an adaptation of the matched guise technique, and focus and semi-structured interviews. The survey findings show that the attitudes of the Xitsonga L1 urban youth towards the accents of rural elderly were significantly negative, while the attitudes of the Xitsonga L1 rural elderly towards the accents of urban youth were equally significantly negative.