The cost of language attitudes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2021/12/0063/000536Keywords:
language attitudes, behavioural game theory, psychic cost, problem-solving task, revealed preferencesAbstract
Data on language attitudes is generally incomparable across studies and context. This paper proposes an experimental approach building on economic theory to elicit preferences about language use in a comparable unit – money. The central element of the experiment is a collaborative problem-solving task in pairs. Participants are offered incentives to use a different language for the task, yielding data on revealed preferences about language use. The cost of language attitudes can be computed as the payoff difference between the utility-maximising language set and the observed choice; psychic costs explain the persistence with suboptimal language sets.
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Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
