This paper is concerned with the relationship between attitude and behaviour in language. Adolescent male and female subjects were recorded and indexscores of their linguistic behaviour compared to their assessment of ingroup members in a verbal-guise attitude experiment, and to their attitudes concerning language usage in a questionnaire. It was hypothesised that male subjects' language would be closer to the vernacular, and that they would also express more positive attitudes towards ingroup members than would female subjects. However, no signi®cant correlation between attitude and behaviour was found in the quantitative analysis, but results from the attitude-questionnaire support our hypothesis: male subjects have more vernacular features in their language and also express more genuinely positive attitudes towards the local vernaculars than do female subjects. Finally, methodological and theoretical implications of these results are discussed, emphasising the importance of using eclectic approaches in future research on attitude-behaviour relations in language.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.