Which of the following is one of the attitudes Donald Mackinnon categorizes toward language use?

• A. Economical or expensive
• B. Pleasant or ugly
• C. Politically correct or incorrect
• D. Loud or quiet

Answer: (B)

Attitudes toward language, for Mackinnon, are about the affective, aesthetic response listeners have to speech. He highlights a dimension that measures how language use is judged in terms of pleasantness versus ugliness. This captures the immediate impression of how something sounds or feels when spoken—the sound, rhythm, and overall beauty or roughness of the language. That makes it the best fit because it centers on subjective beauty or ugliness, not on practical concerns like cost, political correctness, or volume. The other descriptors describe functional or perceptual aspects (economy, norms, loudness) rather than the aesthetic evaluation Mackinnon emphasizes.