Language Attitudes of Non-Indigenous Individuals Residing Near an Indigenous Community in Washington State* Russell Hugo Department of Linguistics, University of Washington, Guggenheim Hall 4th Floor, Box 352425, Seattle, WA 98195-2425
[email protected] Summary: Non-indigenous community members residing near an Indigenous Nation were interviewed in order to learn about their attitudes regarding indigenous and minority language education. A card-sorting instrument was piloted (QIIAS), which served to mediate discussion with minimal priming and allow participants to control of their comparative scale while maintaining data comparability. Keywords: Indigenous languages, attitudes, new instrument, out-group * The author would like to especially thank all of the participants for their generous contributions of time for this project. In addition, thank you to Prof. Amy Snyder Ohta, the UW Working Papers in Linguistics and the anonymous reviewers, the kind individuals who provided feedback at AAAL 2015, the UW Sociolinguistics Brownbag Group, the UW Multilingualists Group, Mike Furr, Hyunjung Ahn, the Oakville Library and the Marysville Library for their help and to Lois Gnegy for help with recruitment. University of Washington Working Papers in Linguistics (UWWPL). Volume 33 (2015). Copyright @ 2015 by Russell Hugo 53 Hugo 54 1 Introduction A recent survey of educators affiliated with Washington State public schools with a substantial population of Indigenous students inquired about Indigenous language education. The survey found that a lack of demand was a primary reason put forth as to why a school did not offer an indigenous language (Hugo, 2010). Demand can come from a larger out-group or from institutional support (e.g., grants and state wide funding), or from a more local level (§Theoretical Framework).