Language Awareness, Language Ideologies, Language Attitudes, etc.: Different Names for Similar Phenomena?

Abstract

This chapter begins by explaining why Language Awareness (LA) research has become particularly important for its author, not least because of his many years of professional activity in the languages department of a business university. In the following theoretical section, he compares the concept of LA with similar notions from the immediate and wider research context. In doing so, he argues for a broad interpretation of LA and for its status as a central notion in Applied Linguistics generally. At the same time, the LA concept shows similarities with ideas discussed in other applied linguistic (sub-)disciplines and research communities, especially those concerned with Language Attitudes, Language Ideologies, and Folk Linguistics. These similarities, however, seem to be acknowledged seldom by representatives of the various approaches. It is therefore argued that a larger research project should compare and contrast all of them with a view to clarifying their respective objects and the terminology they employ.