1 Definitions

Study of the population at large, or a segment thereof, to try to determine what people's attitudes are about:

• Languge in general
• Motivation toward learning of L1 or L2
• the Status of a language, or the status of its speakers, or the status of some form (non-standard? H-variety?) of the language, or its use in certain (new? non-traditional?) domains
• toward Language Shift (within a particular community, or in general)

• toward Loyalty to own language
• a minority group about its own non-standard dialect/language (self- esteem?)

  When questions are asked about any of the above, other factors may enter in, even when the intent to study those factors is not present. There may be an Observer's Paradox, meaning that the fact of asking a question skews the response, affects it in some way. It is important then who asks the question, where, when, how, etc.