Age-related trends in attitudinal evaluations: a multimethod study of language attitudes in Baku, Azerbaijan

This thesis is a sociolinguistic investigation of age-related trends in Bakuvians’ attitudinal evaluations of Azerbaijani, Baku Russian, English, and Moscow Russian. It sought to investigate how far age-related trends indicate attitudinal change in apparent time. Age-related differences in evaluations were hypothesised to reflect Azerbaijan’s turbulent recent history, and a pre- and post-Soviet generational divide in attitudes was expected. Three methods of varying levels of implicitness were employed: auditory affective priming (AAP) (a relatively innovative method), a verbal guise task (VGT), and two direct questionnaires.

The findings are complex. The more implicit methods, the AAP task and VGT, revealed that participants born in the years preceding independence (i.e., Group 2) have a distinctive profile: they offered more positive evaluations than their younger and older counterparts. Although these methods did not elicit the linear trends that emerge in analogous apparent time studies of production, the data may nevertheless indicate attitudinal change in progress. This would reflect a heightened sense of national consciousness accompanied by linguistic openness at the time of Group 2’s upbringing. Given the curvilinear trend, however, alternative interpretations are also considered: age-grading, homophily, and impact of participants’ characteristics.

The first questionnaire elicited evaluations of three accent labels: “Azerbaijani,” “English,” and “Russian.” Almost no age-related trends emerged, suggesting that Bakuvians have aligned these explicitly offered attitudes with contemporary influences. The second questionnaire employed the labels “Baku Russian” and “Moscow Russian.” No significant age-related trends for Moscow Russian emerged and positivity to Baku Russian decreased with age. The explicit, locally-relevant label “Baku Russian” is considered to have evoked strong enough feelings for age-related trends to emerge. Consideration of social factors supports two interpretations of the trends: attitude change in progress and age-grading.

Taken together, the findings contribute to our understanding of sociolinguistic processes that may account for age-related trends in attitudinal ratings.