A study of language attitudes in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area of 45 countries and over 1,700 languages, attempts to: (1) pinpoint attitudinal patterns towards European and indigenous languages; (2) give these attitudes historical perspective; (3) identify attitudes toward language use in education; (4) encourage language research on attitudes in this area; and (5) highlight the implications of attitudes for effective language policy formation and language planning in contemporary Africa, and in multilingual contexts in general. An introductory chapter offers background on the demography of Sub-Saharan Africa and the varied functions of language. The first chapter offers greater detail about the characteristics of language use there, including dense multilingualism, treatment of ex-colonial and indigenous languages, language-related problems, and cross-border languages. Chapter 2 outlines the socio-historical foundations of language attitudes. Research in this area is then reviewed in chapter 3, including its objectives, methodology, major findings, and proposed future directions. Chapter 4 looks at the interrelationship of the size of the speaker group, power, and language attitudes. Language use and attitudes in education are discussed in chapter 5. The final chapter examines the implications of language attitudes research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Contains eight pages of references. (MSE)