Attitudes to accents

Abstract This chapter looks at the processes involved in the development of the attitudes to voices. After outlining the main outcomes – and their social issues – of different research traditions related to language regard studies (such as language attitude research, language ideology analysis), it goes on to survey the recent findings that focus on the complexity and the variability of the responses to language varieties. Thereafter, the text discusses to what extent this focus on complexity conforms to the social constructivist turn in social sciences, namely how current research deals with non-essentialist assumptions and non-fixity of meanings. Finally, the chapter critically addresses the agency attributed to social actors in meaning making and examines findings that show the importance of legitimacy issues to the interpretation of attitudes to accents and make explicit the political dimension in the use of language resources as well as in the regard on them.