Gender and Age-based Variation in the Perception of Turkish Dialects

Abstract

This study in perceptual dialectology aims to show that the direct elicitation of conscious evaluations of language varieties may give systematic results such that some of the same patterns of social differentiation which emerge in the study of production data also emerge with respect to the conscious evaluation of language varieties. Specifically, our results demonstrate that several significant, systematic gender and agebased patterns emerge in a study which investigates the perceptions and evaluations of Turkish regional varieties by Turkish nonlinguists. Thus, it appears to be the case that gender and age, at least, are influential social factors not just in language production, but in conscious language evaluation as well. The results confirm Preston's (1989) claim that studies in perceptual dialectology may supplement sociolinguistic dialectology in illuminating ways, since they may provide additional insight into the interplay of conscious attitudes towards language, social differentiation and language production.