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Article published In: English World-Wide
Vol. 46:2 (2025) ► pp.127–153

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Implicit language attitudes among young, white, L1-Afrikaans speakers towards two South African Englishes

The role of gender and family language

ORCiD logo with link | Universidad de Salamanca | North-West University
 | North-West University
 | Universidad de Oviedo
Published online: 22 April 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.24025.alv
Abstract
This paper reports on an Implicit Association Test (IAT)-based investigation of the language-attitudes of the white (Afrikaans and English) speech-communities of South Africa, with a focus on young, L1-Afrikaans speakers. Drawing from an extensive literature review, two hypotheses were formulated: (1) participants would exhibit out-group bias towards Standard South African English over Afrikaans-accented English; (2) contextually relevant socio-demographic and sociolinguistic factors would explain this bias. Contrary to the first hypothesis, L1-Afrikaans speakers showed an implicit bias towards their in-group accent. Gender and family language emerged as significant factors in explaining these results. More specifically, females were found to show significantly more in-group bias than males, while subjects reporting both English and Afrikaans as family languages showed the most in-group bias. Given that the outcomes from this implicit approach provide new insights, further research into the role of gender and language-loyalty within this speech-community through narrative-based elicitation methods is recommended.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Socio-historical context of the study
    • 1.2Research site
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1IAT design
      • 2.2Participants
    • 3.Results
    • 3.1The effect of gender
    • 3.2The effect of family language
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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