Electronic Theses and Dissertation

Acehnese people tend to perceive the great aceh dialect as unfavorable compared with the north aceh dialect. most of people assume that great aceh dialect is rude, rough and crude while north aceh dialect is judged as refined, standard and prestigious. this study is to investigate acehnese attitudes towards great and north aceh dialects. the matched guise test, which is one of the indirect tools to investigate people’s attitude towards particular language varieties, was used in collecting the data in this study. the data from the questionnaire of the matched guise test were analyzed in descriptive statistic in order to determine the significances of the results. however, the findings of this matched guise test were not as expected. the responses from the respondents did not support certain personality traits which were strongly associated with stigmatized dialect. it was found that acehnese speakers mostly share positive and favorable attitude towards both great and north aceh dialects. it indicates that the use of this matched guise test in the study of language attitudes seems to be not suitable in indonesia in general and in aceh in particular because of some conditions such as strong islamic values and asian culture owned by acehnese.