Chinese senior secondary students’ attitudes towards national, regional and foreign languages: the case of Chongqing

Abstract

This paper reports on language attitudes towards the national language (Putonghua), the regional dialect (Chongqing) and the key foreign language (English) of a group of senior high school students (N = 321) in Chongqing in mainland China. Unlike the numerous other studies of language attitudes in China this one is situated outside the more socially-economically developed east coast cities (such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong), focuses on high school students and uses an innovative multidimensional combination of direct and indirect measurements in order to measure and compare the dimensions of integrative/instrumental attitudes and overt/covert attitudes. The findings reveal clear and statistically significant differences in participants’ attitudes towards Chongqing dialect (their mother tongue), Putonghua (their national language) and English (their foreign language). These participants attach the highest integrative value to Chongqing dialect (followed by Putonghua then English) but the highest instrumental value to English (followed by Putonghua then Chongqing dialect). Their overt attitudes are more positive than their covert attitudes towards all three language varieties and there is generally more consistency in overt attitudes than in covert attitudes.