Resumen de Attitudes toward the Greek Cypriot dialect: sociocultural implications

Andreas Papapavlou

• Contrary to linguistic evidence, people still believe that some languages are more "precise," "beautiful," and "expressive" than other languages and that some dialects are "inferior," "inexpressive," and "incomplete" compared with their corresponding Standard or official languages.

  Many studies have been carried out and several techniques have been employed in order to examine peoples' attitudes toward languages and varieties of languages. Some of the most common techniques include using surveys and questionnaires, carrying out Interviews, recording natural conversations, and employing experimental manipulations.

  In the present study an experimental attempt was made to investigate Greek Cypriots' attitudes toward their native language, the Cypriot dialect, by employing the matched-guise technique. Twenty-two first-year Greek Cypriot students attending the University of Cyprus were selected to serve äs subjects (judges) and to evaluate the qualities of several Speakers using the Cypriot dialect on one occasion (one guise) and Standard Modern Greek (SMG) on another occasion (the other guise).

  Judges' evaluations took the form of filling in a table that included 12 traits such äs kindness, intelligence, sincerity, dependability, and sense of humor. The results obtained show that the SMG guises were rated more favorably than the Cypriot guises.