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Study Abroad and the Second Language Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation in Spanish
Edited by Sara L. Zahler, Avizia Y. Long and Bret Linford
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 37] 2023
► pp. 229–265

Chapter 8
The role of language attitudes in the L2 acquisition of sociolinguistic variation

The case of pre-verbal subjects in wh-questions

| Minnesota State University, Mankato

Previous studies have examined second language learners’ attitudes toward various Spanish dialects. Nonetheless, few studies have used matched guise to assess implicit language attitudes with respect to morphosyntactic variables. The present study explores the relationship between language attitudes, social interaction, and selection of pre-verbal subjects in wh-questions with Spanish learners studying abroad in the Dominican Republic. Study abroad learners and a group of at-home students completed a written contextualized task examining subject position in wh-questions. Learners studying abroad also completed a matched guise task and a social interaction questionnaire. Findings indicate that learners with an increase in intelligence rating for pre-verbal subjects at Time 2 favored selection of pre-verbal subjects at the end of their study abroad.

Keywords: language attitudes, pre-verbal subjects in wh-questions, Dominican Spanish, matched guise, short-term study abroad
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of the literature
    • 2.1Wh-questions in Spanish
    • 2.2Wh-questions in Caribbean Spanish
    • 2.3Social interaction
    • 2.4Language attitudes
  • 3.Research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Materials and procedure
      • 4.2.1Written Contextualized Task (WCT)
      • 4.2.2Matched guise
      • 4.2.3Study Abroad Social Interaction Questionnaire (SASIQ)
      • 4.2.4Language background questionnaire
    • 4.3Coding
      • 4.3.1Dependent variable
      • 4.3.2Independent variables
        • 4.3.2.1Linguistic variables
        • 4.3.2.2Extralinguistic variables
    • 4.4Analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Wh-questions
    • 5.2Attitudes
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.37.08den
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