Language Attitudes and the Future of Bilingualism: The Case of Paraguay

This paper has two main objectives. First, it examines the language attitudes of parents and secondary school students who are participating in programmes where both official languages of Paraguay, Spanish and Guaraní, are taught. As its second objective, this paper studies the relationship between linguistic attitudes and usage. Many studies have shown that positive attitudes towards a language usually increase its usage; on the other hand, negative attitudes may obstruct the vitality of a language, in many cases leading to language death. Nevertheless, according to our data from Paraguay, the usage of Guaraní does not reflect positive attitudes towards this language. There is a clear inconsistency between language attitude and linguistic usage.