Splitting evaluative association measures reveals how sociolinguistic context shapes implicit attitudes towards regional and minority languages

Tamburelli, Marco, Breit, Florian, Gruffydd, Ianto ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6242-9411, Brasca, Lissander and Thierry, Guillaume 2026. Splitting evaluative association measures reveals how sociolinguistic context shapes implicit attitudes towards regional and minority languages. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 10.1177/0261927X261437126

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Abstract

We present three studies examining evaluative associations as manifestations of implicit attitudes towards languages in three sociolinguistically distinct bilingual communities: Lombard–Italian, Moselle Franconian–German, and Welsh–English. Using a Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT) that controls for spurious priming effects and subsequently allows split analyses, study 1 evidenced strongly negative attitudes towards Lombard across measures. Study 2 uncovered a similar trend towards Moselle Franconian, but only in response to pictures following words that required a Go response, not for pictures that followed non-target words. In study 3, although the GNAT failed to detect any significant associations, split analysis revealed that participants responded faster to positive pictures following non-target English words. Therefore, by splitting data according to the Go/NoGo status of the attitude object, we can achieve finer characterizations of implicit attitudes, while highlighting the prominent role of sociolinguistic context in modulating activation of each language in regional/minority language communities.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	0261-927X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 April 2026
Last Modified:	05 Aug 2026 06:06
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186648

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