Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Lectal acquisition and linguistic stereotype formation 247

Let us first of all mention the fact that the questionnaire designed to elicit
data related to the second question was distributed to the 8-9 and the 12-13
year-olds but not to the children aged 6-7. In a pilot study conducted previ-
ously in order to specify factors such as the optimal length of the stimuli,
the most convenient age groups and the type of questions to be incorpo-
rated in the final design, it became clear that a questionnaire would only be
a useful instrument for the age groups in which children have command of
all the notions involved in a given question and are able to provide reliable
answers to the questions posed. For a mixture of cognitive and practical
reasons, all but the youngest age group received the questionnaire. In the
pilot study questions such as “How many countries have you visited?”,
regions were often provided as samples of countries (e.g 3: France, Valen-
cia and Portugal). Note that lack of adequate notions of geographical and
political categorisations did not prevent the children from carrying out the
experiments in satisfactory ways. In order to associate a stimulus with the
name of the region or place evoked no geographical or political knowledge
is required. In the same vein, when 6-year-olds were asked to quantify the
number of hours they watch TV in the course of a normal week, vague or
inaccurate results were frequently yielded. To stipulate the duration of an
event in terms of units such as hours was an easy task for the 8-9 year-olds,
but not for the youngest children. The 6-7 year olds were thus discarded as
informants for this part of the study (but did answer the two open questions
formulated in the response form regarding salience of linguistic structure
and social associations as there were no impediments to comprehension in
these cases). The questionnaire gathered data on the following dimensions.

1. Age


2. Number of countries visited so far


3. Nature of countries visited so far


4. Places frequently visited during holidays or weekends


5. Places of residence


6. Origin of mother


7. Origin of father


8. Origin of maternal/paternal grandparents and current place of resi-
   dence


9. Origin of caretakers/teachers/friends/neighbours


10. Number of hours spent watching TV/week


11. Number and nature of accents that you know how to imitate