ABSTRACT
Attitudes towards language(s) and language use are commonplace throughout the world. People assign various attributes to language forms; they may feel that a language or variety of a language is 'elegant', 'expressive', 'vulgar', 'guttural', 'musical' or that one language form is 'more polite' or more 'aesthetically pleasing/displeasing' than another one. All levels of language use are subject to such notions and we invest some language forms with prestige whilst others are stigmatised. Prestige and stigma are connected with speakers of languages and have to do with social class and social or national identity, and with ideas about status, solidarity and unity. Popular evidence from the media and academic surveys of language attitudes reveal the same underlying and recurrent patterns of values and value judgements within a community about the languages and varieties of language within it, and such judgements affect our social and cultural lives in important and influential ways.
