This thesis studies the relationship between American teachers’ attitudes toward African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and the intensity of their contact with linguistics. Several studies have found negative attitudes toward this variety, including attitudes of teachers. Negative attitudes toward a variety can trigger lowered teacher expectations. According to the Pygmalion theory, lower expectations can cause lower rates of scholastic achievement on the side of the student. This is one of the reasons why methods to influence negative attitudes toward varieties of English have been in the focus of sociolinguistic research for quite some time. Oftentimes, sociolinguistics have assumed that an effect holds between linguistic knowledge and negative language attitudes. So far, this assumed relationship has been tested by Blake & Cutler 2003, Abdul-Hakim 2002 and Bowie & Bond 1994. Only the latter’s data supported such a relationship, in the two other studies no relation could be found between contact with linguistics and attitudes toward AAVE. This thesis tested the assumed relationship between attitudes and linguistic knowledge using an ex-post-facto research setup. The attitudes of 171 American teachers, retired teachers, students undergoing teacher training and teaching assistants were assessed using a 13-item Thurstone scale. Contact with linguistics was measured via guided self-assessment. The data showed a significant relationship between response behavior on the Thurstone scale and the degree of contact with linguistics for several items. Interestingly, this relationship was not always in the form of increased contact connected to ‘improvements’ of attitudes. The response behavior of subjects was characterized by ambivalence. Generally, subjects agreed with items that were positioned on distant points of the attitude continuum. This form of response behavior is evaluatively contradictory, i.e. subjects agreed with both positive (e.g. “African American English has a place at the home of its speakers.”) and negative items (e.g. “Speakers of African American English do not express complete thoughts.”), which implies attitudes that are positive and negative at the same time, i.e. ambivalent. A smaller subsample was asked whether they perceived their attitudes as being ambivalent and whether they would describe themselves as ‘torn‘ over this issue. Half of the subsample did so, the other half did not perceive itself as torn over the issue of AAVE. The concept of ‘code-switching‘ appeared to have a powerful influence on subjects‘ reported perceived ambivalence, i.e. on feeling torn on an issue. In a second study the relationship between contact with linguistics and attitudes toward basilects was tested for the German language community. For this purpose, a pretest-posttest design was used. Attitudes were measured via a simplified Likert-scale at two points in time: at the beginning and end sessions of an introductory linguistics class. Freshmen students from two North Rhine-Westphalian universities served as subjects. For one subsample (N=19) no significant difference could be observed between pre- and posttest, for the other subsample (N=66), the only significant difference between pre- and posttest lay with one out of 12 items. No major effect of linguistics on attitudes could be shown for any of the groups. This thesis creates doubt whether a persuasion-based approach, especially one concentrating on transmitting linguistic knowledge, is an effective means to evoke attitude change concerning basilects. Additionally, it puts emphasis on the structure of attitudes toward such varieties. The potential ambivalence of such attitudes has to be taken into consideration, may it be in measuring them, may it be in attempts to change them. - Abdul-Hakim, I. (2002). Florida preservice teachers’ attitudes toward African American Vernacular English. Ph. D. thesis, Florida State University. etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/ etd-06232003-112932/. - Blake, R. and C. Cutler (2003). AAE and variation in teachers’ attitudes: a question of school philosophy? Linguistics and education 14(2), 163-194.- Bowie, R. L. and C. L. Bond (1994). Influencing future teachers’ attitudes toward Black English: are we making a difference? Journal of teacher education 42(2), 112-118
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