| The following Ph.D. is an approach to Gibraltar as a speech community from the point of view of social psychology, our specific research being centred in the discipline of language attitudes. By employing a mentalist view where attitudes are measured through the subjects' perceptions, our aim will be to find out what Gibraltarians will think about their communicative exchanges; which varieties they will use in different situations; with which people they employ these varieties; and what are their feelings when using them.; The first chapter is devoted to the historical and sociolinguistic frame of Gibraltar and its Spanish surroundings. A detailed study on its idiosyncrasy and inner history will be a key issue to interpret the results of the survey more accurately.; The second chapter consists of two parts, in the first we will revise the linguistic references about Gibraltar and we will take as a starting point two studies carried out by two German researchers, Modrey (1998) and Kellermann (2001). In the second, and as a basis for our study, we will make a critical analysis of the theoretical framework of language attitudes. We will use a mentalist view by which attitudes are divided within three components: cognitive, affective and conative, each one being subdivided itself into different dimensions. A questionnaire has been elaborated whose questions measure these three components. Besides this direct-method technique, we have employed an indirect method, the matched guise technique. For the first one, 122 subjects were surveyed and 183 subjects participated in the second one.; In the third chapter results will be assessed after a statistical analysis. The following independent variables will be studied: age, sex, level of education, informant's place of birth as well as his/her parents', years lived in Gibraltar and family links with Spain. Significant differences will be found in every single variable.; Moreover, this study offers a comparison of Gibraltar with other multilingual communities, taking particular interest in the role bilingualism and code-switching play in these speech communities. |
