[Grammar] attitude towards/to/about

[northpath]

These are two sentences from the Macmillan dictionary online:
attitude toward: Attitudes towards the older members of the group will have to change.
attitude to: People here have a more relaxed attitude to their work.
Why there are two difference prepositions in these sentences? Are they interchangeable?
And here an example from the Longman dictionary:
attitude about
▪ young people's attitudes about sex
Why the preposition about? Why not to or towards?

 

[teechar]

They're all possible. Take a look at the following ngrams.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra...e towards sex;,c0;.t1;,attitude about sex;,c0

https://books.google.com/ngrams/gra... towards sex;,c0;.t1;,attitudes about sex;,c0

 

[jutfrank]

Okay, I'm going to give a different answer.

First, ignore the ngram data. I don't think it's at all helpful.

Second, don't say attitude/attitudes about. It's just not good.

Third, don't ask whether prepositions are interchangeable. It's very rare that they ever are.

Fourth, you don't have to worry particularly about the word attitude. The question here is really about use of prepositions (although of course the meaning of the word attitude, or any word, affects the use of its preposition). The question should be about the difference between to and towards. And to answer this, in short: towards has a greater emphasis on directionality.

Look at the following example:

Young people's attitudes to sex have changed.

Here there is no reason at all to emphasise, so to is the best and most natural choice. about is wrong and towards is unnecessary. attitude here means something like 'the way young people generally think and feel about sex'.

Now compare with this:

The young people's attitudes towards the older members of the group will have to change.

Here the speaker chooses to emphasise directionality. The word attitude probably means something like 'the way the young people behave in the presence of elders'. We assume that they have been behaving in a way that is somehow irreverant or disrespectful, possibly in their speech, possibly in their manner, possibly even with aggression or hostility. about is wrong and to does not have the same force.

Can you see the different effects of these uses of different prepositions?

 

[bubbha]

In American English, "toward" is more common than "towards".