Varieties of English

TQA7004
Week 10
English as a Global Language: Attitudes & Perceptions
Discussion
Look at the quotes from McArthur (1998, p. 3) & discuss the questions
below:

• ‘Yes, he speaks English, but it’s American English. And New York.’
• ‘Well, yes, she speaks English, but if that’s what they do in Scotland …’
• ‘Sometimes I’m not sure they really speak English in London – the ordinary
people, I mean. I can’t make head or tail of them. I think they do it
deliberately.’
• ‘You know, his Irish (or Yorkshire or Ozark or Newfoundland) dialect is
impenetrable. I don’t understand a word he says.’
• ‘Well, Jamaican isn’t English at all, is it?’
• While we may not always be consciously aware of them, ‘language
attitudes permeate our daily lives’ (Garrett, 2010, p. 2).
• To what extent is this true?
• Are you familiar with any negative language attitudes expressed through the
media?
• The attitudes expressed in the quote from McArthur may make some
speakers feel that their English is inferior.
• How do you think Scottish or Jamaican speakers would react to these
comments?
• Have you heard similar remarks in your own context?
Discussion

• Why are attitudes worth researching?

• What are the factors that influence attitudes?
• How could you research the attitudes of speakers & learners of
English?
• Would your results have any implications for teaching English?
The importance of language attitudes & factors
influencing attitudes
Defining attitudes

• One of the most distinctive & indispensable concepts in social

psychology
• No single definition
• Attitude - ‘a disposition to react favourably or unfavourably to a class
of objects’ (Sarnoff, 1970, p. 279)
• Composites of cognitive, affective & behavioural components
• Involves beliefs about the world, e.g. believing that English is useful &
may lead to a job promotion (cognitive)
• Involves an emotional response, e.g. anxiety of speaking English in
public/in front of a NES (affective)
• Determines behavior, e.g. employment of NESs over NNESs as
teachers (behavioural)
• Mental constructs acquired through a variety of factors, including
positive/negative experiences
 Cognitive
Involve beliefs about the
world: ‘English is useful
for my future career.’

Behavioural Affective
Determinants of Involves an
behaviour: ‘We emotional
have employed five response: ‘I’m very
new NESTs this afraid of speaking
year.’ English in public.’
Attitudes toward language in society
• People make inferences about each other based on their language
use/accents:
• I wonder where she comes from
• I think … is the appropriate/inappropriate …
• I love/hate …
• Attitudes can be positive or negative & lead to inferences/
assumptions
• May bias social interaction
• ‘language attitudes represent important communicative phenomena
worth understanding’ (Cargile et al., 2006, p. 443)
(1) Life opportunities
• Media – full of stories about how accents influence life opportunities
• E.g. A Pakistani immigrant who moved to Seattle advocates that
immigrants to the US try to imitate AmE through adapting intonation,
mastering the American accent, studying American idioms etc. He
says:
• ‘Most folks just couldn’t understand the way my learned British accent
commingled with my native Pashtun accent. “Oh, okay! You mean blah blah,”
some folks would respond. Others would say, “This guy is not from here.” It
embarrassed me’ (Ismail, 2012).
• Many enroll in accent reduction classes & feel that their L1 & cultural
background is a hindrance to integrating into the target culture
• Reports of people losing jobs for accent-related reasons
• Cases of discrimination over English-speaking ability or foreign
accents (The Insurance Journal, 2012), e.g. an Indian-born UK
customer adviser working in New Delhi was dismissed for his Indian
accent, which wasn’t ‘English enough’ (O’Mara, 2007, cited in Garrett,
2010)
(2) Political level
• Language attitudes can also determine which varieties receive
institutional support & some accents seen as more prestigious, e.g.
General AmE
• Accent reduction classes
• Learn how to ‘lose your accent and speak like an American’: TestDEN
Accent Reduction Course YouTube video
• But even Americans have negative attitudes towards some American
varieties: The Boston Globe – ‘Class helps locals lose their Boston
accent’
Factors influencing attitudes (towards accents, varieties
& the language itself)
• Cultural & social groups develop norms that imply what is ‘correct’ &
‘incorrect’ based on history, politics & prevailing stereotypes
• Some languages, varieties, dialects & their speakers are valued within
a culture as high in vitality while others are stigmatized as non-
standard; people evaluate Englishes in a hierarchical manner
• Standard language ideology influences attitudes; prejudice towards
local varieties by those attached to native English; stereotypes
perpetuated through the use of native English in educational models
• Stereotypes help sustain inequalities
• Vocal qualities (pitch, loudness), physical features, race (skin colour)
can influence language attitudes
• ‘not all foreign accents, but only accent that is linked to skin that isn’t
white … which evokes such negative reactions’ (Lippi-Green, 1997, p.
238-239)
• However, familiarity with certain Englishes /using ELF/ELF speakers
may influence attitudes towards them or English in general – may
lead to more favourable attitudes
 Stereotypes
Motivation, use &
experience –
Dörnyei’s (2009) ideal
Contact & use
L2 self & linguistic
self-confidence
(Dörnyei et al., 2006)
Factors
influencing
attitudes
Familiarity –
Dörnyei et al.’s
Proficiency (2006) contact
hypothesis – no
Person specific – contact
voice, race. opportunities
Rubin’s (1992) &
Amin’s (1999)
studies
Attitude change
• Attitudes – not static; subject to change – shaped
• As contact opportunities increase, attitudes may change
• Example – RP:
• More popular with 1.5 billion speakers outside England than within the
country (Morrish, 1999, cited in Garrett, 2010, p.14)
• Changeable; has moved from a place of prestige value to negative value in the
last half-century
• The sacking of Zenab Ahmed, a BBC news presenter, who wrote the following
to the Daily Telegraph (30 October, 2003, cited in Garrett, 2010, p. 14):
• ‘The BBC has sacked me for sounding too posh. At the moment, the World Service is on a
mission to sound classless – hence the proliferation of Scottish, Welsh, Irish &
Australasian voices.’
 • BBC News website (8 October, 1999) – Boris Johnson claimed he was sacked
as a presenter on BBC Radio 4 because his accent was ‘too posh’
• ‘Cheryl Cole’s accent is not worth the risk for X Factor, Fox decides’ – Guardian
headline, 26 May, 2011); Cole was sacked from the judging panel of the US
version of the X Factor because her strong Geordie accent was difficult for the
US audience to understand
• Do you know of any similar reports/incidents in the Malaysian
context?
• Attitudes – complex constructs
Research methods used to investigate attitudes
• Language attitude studies date back to the 1930s (Pear, 1931); can be
grouped according to their research approach:
(1) Societal treatment
(2) Direct measures
(3) Indirect measures
(1) Societal treatment
• Designed to gain insights into the relative status of language varieties
• Analyses of the ‘treatment’ given to them & to their speakers
• Tools:
• Content analysis
• Observation
• Ethnography
• Analysis of government policies, job advertisements, & media output
• Important first step in understanding language attitudes, looking at
treatment of language in the public domain (e.g. official language
policies)
• Linguistic landscape studies – ‘The language of public road signs,
advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop
signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the
linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban
agglomeration’ (Landry & Bourhis, 1997, p. 25)
• Linguistic landscape studies has flourished with digital photography &
globalization; shed light on the treatment of language in society (see
Backhaus, 2007, for an overview)
• Highlights attitudes as well as power relations between linguistics
groups
• Books & websites:
• Sign Language: Travels in Unfortunate English from the Readers of
The Telegraph (Aurum Press, 2011)
• The Lonely Planet’s Signspotting: Funny signs from around the world
(2) Direct measures
• Has become very common in recent years
• Asking direct questions about language evaluation, preference etc.
through:
• Questionnaires
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Diaries
• Perceptual dialectology:
• Perceptual dialectology:
• A branch of folk linguistics which involves rating languages without exposure to them
• Examines ‘people’s (more conscious) beliefs about language use’ (Jenkins, 2007, p. 75)
• Drawing speech zones on a blank (or minimally detailed) map, ranking accents
(correct/incorrect; pleasant/unpleasant), & interviewing respondents about the tasks &
discussing the varieties
• Useful in explaining attitudes – particularly useful in the context of GE, where it is
necessary to investigate attitudes towards often unfamiliar varieties of English
(3) Indirect measures
• Matched guise technique (MGT)
• Participants asked to evaluate audio-taped speakers
• Told that they are listening to a number of different speakers, although it is
one speaker in different ‘guises’
• Attitude-rating scale to evaluate speakers on friendliness, sociability,
intelligence, etc.; evaluations thought to reflect underlying attitudes
• Developed by Lambert et al. (1960)
• Criticisms:
• Deceptive
• Problems with ability to keep vocal characteristics constant across experimental
conditions
• Inability to measure other important variables
• ‘Acontextual.’ – nothing said to the respondents about the context
• Verbal guise technique (VGT)
• Speech samples provided by authentic speakers of each variety
• Participants still think they are rating people rather than language
• When this method is not contextualised or supported with other more
qualitative methods, it is difficult to see how rating language varieties based
on adjectives such as ‘intelligent’ can really tell us about what people think
about models, policy & communication
Research studies: attitudes towards native & non-native
English
 Attitudes of NESs towards NE
Study Country N size Method Attitudes Results
towards:
Huygens New 120 VGT English, • Maori speakers were the least successfully
& Zealand Pakeha Dutch, identified by ethnic group
Vaughan NZ uni. Maori, & • English, Dutch, & then Maori were seen as
(1983) students Pakeha prestigious
speakers (3 • English & Pakeha speakers seen as equally
status prestigious – related to occupational class
groups) • Speech styles approximating RP were rated
the highest

Stewart, America 60 uni. VGT Standard • British speakers rated more highly than
Ryan & students British & American English on status, but the opposite
Giles standard for solidarity
(1985) American • RP rated higher than the students’ own
English accent for social status, but less intelligible.

Bayard et New 400 VGT New • American English was most highly evaluated
al. (2001) Zealand, students Zealand, • Australian students ranked own accents in
Australia, Australian, third or fourth place on most traits
& American, • New Zealand students ranked own accent
America and ‘RP- below American, Australian, & RP
type’ English • New Zealanders (& Australians) did not give
their own accents top ratings in solidarity
 Conclusions

• High vitality of both standard American & RP – within & outside of the IC
• Attitude studies show that these two varieties are still held in high regard
• Huygens & Vaughan’s (1983) & Bayard’s (2001) studies indicate that
international ‘standard’ Englishes are regarded more highly than their own
locally spoken Englishes
• Bayard’s (2001) study suggests a movement away from BrE toward AmE;
AmE was the most highly valued & appears to be on its way to equalling or
replacing RP as the prestige accent
• Attitudes are subject to change, even within the IC
 Attitudes of NNESs towards NE
Topic Study Country Research design method

Ladegaard & Sachdev (2006) Denmark Verbal guise study with 96 EFL
learners
Attitudes of non-native English speakers to

Kirkpatrick & Xu (2002) China Questionnaire with 171 students

McKenzie (2008) Japanese learners Verbal guise study & perceptual

in Scotland
Study dialectology
native English

Cargile et al. (2006) Japan Verbal guise study with 113

university students

Adolphs (2005) UK Interviews with 24 international

students at a British university
Attitudes of NNESs towards NE
(IC & acknowledgment of variation)
Study Country N Size Method Results

McKenzie Scotland Japanese VGT; PD • More positive towards Scottish Standard English speech
(2008a and uni. students than Glasgow Vernacular speech
2008b)
Cargile et Japanese • African-American Vernacular English rated less
al. (2006) students positively in terms of status, but more favourably in
terms of social attractiveness than Mid-West US English

• Lack of acknowledgement of varieties of English within the

US & Britain; tend to group IC English as 1 variety, ignoring
regional varieties (with a few exceptions)
• Studies highlight the tendency to judge language varieties
hierarchically
• But VGT & MGT tell us little about attitudes, or what factors
serve to explain these attitudes
• Adolph’s (2005) longitudinal study:
• Followed 24 international students on a pre-sessional English language course
(one year study at UK-based uni.); interviews at two-monthly intervals
• Results: simplistic notion of the NES, & familiarity led to more negative
attitudes; students did not encounter the ‘standard’ variety that they had
been exposed to in their previous classroom
• Students became increasingly aware of the need to understand English in
international communication
• When students encountered Englishes that did not fit their preconceived
notion of ‘standard’, it led to negative evaluations of the Englishes & their
speakers
Attitudes of NNESs towards NE & NNE
Research design
Topic Study Country Results
method
Chiba et al. Japan Verbal guise with • More positive towards NESs –
(1995) 169 university familiarity.
Attitudes of non-native English speakers to

students • Familiarity didn’t lead to positive

attitudes towards Japanese.
non-native and native Englishes

• Suggested implications for ELT, but

not investigated.
Starks and New Zealand Questionnaire with • American and British English
Paltridge (1994) 172 Japanese rated more favourably than NZ
university students English.
• 2nd highest preference (after
American English) was for learning
English with a Japanese accent.
Matsuura Japan Closed questionnaire
et al. (2004) with 50 university
teachers and 660
university students
 Conclusions

• Preference for NE accents; may be related to the use of NES model in

ELT
• Rejection of NNE (including own ‘variety’) accents; although speakers
may be able to comprehend own accents better, there is little prestige
value attached to the accent – intelligibility does not always equate
with acceptance
Attitude studies related to the pedagogical context of ELT
• Why is it important to investigate learners’ attitudes?
• Awareness of learners’ beliefs:
• Make both learners & teachers aware of their needs – may result in increased
autonomy & self-awareness
• Help them evaluate their own stereotypes & prejudices
• More effective lesson planning & course implementation
• Language planning & the elaboration of pedagogical objectives
 ELT-related studies
Research studies on attitudes towards English in relation to ELT

Study Country Research design method

Prodromou (1992) Greece Questionnaire with 300 students
Dalton-Puffer et al. Austria Modified match guise with 132 students
(1997)
Rubin and Smith (1990) USA Matched guise study

Rubin (1992) USA Verbal guise study with 62 university students

Kelch and Santana- USA Verbal guise study with 56 ESL students (mostly
Williamson (2002) Spanish speakers)

Butler (2007) Korea Matched guise study with 312 grade 6 students

Mckenzie (2008a, Japan Verbal guise study with 558 university students
2008b)
He and Li (2009) China Questionnaire, matched guise, and interview
with 795 students and 189 teachers
Greece
• Prodromou’s (1992) survey-based study investigated 300 English
students’ attitudes on the content of language teaching, including
attitudes towards bilingual, bicultural teachers, NES models & the
cultural content of lessons
• Just over half thought that NES teachers should know the learners’
mother tongue & the local culture
• Popularity of BrE compared to AmE in part due to widespread feeling
amongst Greeks that BrE is a “purer”, more “refined” form of English’
(pp. 44–45)
• 62% of students said they would like to speak English like a NES &
60% have a strong interest in British life & institutions
• The descriptive study only utilized questionnaires & the attitudes of
these Greek students are not explored in any depth
Austria
• Dalton-Puffer et al. (1997) conducted an Austrian-based modified MGT
study involving 132 students of EFL (2/3 planned to become English
teachers), in a given context (listeners thought the purpose of the study
was to choose voices for an upcoming audio-book)
• The Austrian accent received the most negative response & the majority
favoured RP as a model of pronunciation & familiarity was listed as a
reason
• Personal experience found to be much more important in choosing General
AmE over RP
• Almost half of the respondents had not experienced English in a NES
country & of those who chose RP as a model, even more students (55%),
had not spent more than 1 month in a NES country
• Of those who preferred an American model, only 34% had not been on an
extended stay abroad
The USA
• In Rubin & Smith’s (1990) MGT study, 2 NSs of Cantonese recorded highly
accented & moderately accented versions of simulated classroom lectures
• Perceptions of accent were the strongest predictors of teacher ratings;
when students believed an instructor’s accent to be ‘foreign’, they also
viewed them to be a poorer teacher
• Also, the number of courses students had taken that were taught by NNES
teachers was found to be the best predictor of listening comprehension
scores
• Kelch & Santana-Williamson’s study (2002) asked 56 ESL students to listen
to & rate 3 NESs & 3 NNESs of different varieties who read the same script;
teachers perceived as NESs were seen as more likeable, educated,
experienced & overall better teachers
• Dominance of NESs in traditional ELT influences attitudes & may be seen as
a major reason for positive attitudes towards these speakers
South Korea & Japan
• Butler’s (2007) MGT study on the effects of South Korean elementary
teachers’ oral proficiencies & pronunciation on 312 grade 6 students’
listening comprehension examined students’ attitudes towards teachers
with American-accented English & Korean-accented English
• The results failed to find any difference in comprehension, although
students who thought the AmE guise had better pronunciation were more
confident in using English, focused more on fluency than on accuracy &
used less Korean in the English class
• The students preferred the American-accented guise as their teacher
• A further verbal guise study of the ELT pedagogical context is McKenzie’s
(2008) study of 558 Japanese university students’ attitudes towards 6
varieties of English
• Again, the results suggest a favourable attitude towards standard & non-
standard varieties of UK & US English in terms of status
Conclusions
• Positive attitudes towards NE are also present in the ELT context
• English learners have a strong attachment to NES norms; tendency for
learners in the Expanding Circle to regard ‘standard’ Englishes/accents
such as British RP or General American as having more prestige than
other varieties, including non-native ones
• Many researchers advocate curriculum & educational change in order
to shift attitudes of students in the EC
• ‘It seems unreasonable to impose a single, or, indeed, a restricted range of
pedagogical models for English language classrooms’ (McKenzie, 2008a, p.
79)
• MGT & VGT studies reveal just a little about attitudes & lack in-depth
information about students’ orientations
• Many factors influence these attitudes:
• Predominance of the NES episteme in ELT
• Familiarity
• Stereotypes
• Proficiency
• Gender
• Students continue to favour NESs, but more research is required
• Only a few studies
• Are students making decisions based on the availability of sound information
(e.g. dominance of NE)?
• Learners need more choice & ‘the choice needs to be made in full
knowledge of the sociolinguistic facts and without pressure from the
dominant NS community’ (Jenkins, 2006, p. 155)
Attitudes towards English as a lingua franca
Research studies related to English as a lingua franca

Topic Study Country Research design Method

Jenkins (2007) Mixed (12 Questionnaire and perceptual
countries) dialectology with 326 English teachers
(300 NNES)
Teachers’ attitudes towards ELF

Sifakis and Sougari (2005) Greece Questionnaire with 421 teachers

Decke-Cornhill (2003) Germany Focus groups with teachers in two types

of school
Murray (2003) Switzerland Questionnaires with 253 Swiss teachers
from private and state schools
Sasaki (2004, cited in Japan Questionnaire with 97 Japanese high
Yoshikawa, 2005) school English teachers

Seidlhofer and Widdowson Austria Opinion essays with 48 3rd and 4th year
(2003) university students taking a teacher
education option

Jenkins (2007) Mixed Interviews with 17 NNESTs

Research studies related to English as a lingua franca

Topic Study Country Research design Method

Timmis (2002) Mixed Questionnaires (180 teachers from 45 countries
and 400 students in 14 countries)
Students’ attitudes towards the

Kuo (2006) UK Interviews with 3 university students

role of Global Englishes

Grau (2005) Germany Questionnaire and post-discussion with 231 1st

year university students
Matsuda (2003) Japan Questionnaires with 33 high school students,
interviews with 4 teachers and 10 student
observations
Galloway (2011) Japan Questionnaires (116 students), interviews (20
students) and focus groups (24 students)
Galloway (2013) Japan Questionnaires (52 students) and interviews
(4 students)
Studies in Global Englishes (GEs)
• There have been only a few studies conducted in the field that have
investigated students’ attitudes towards GEs
• The main conclusions to be drawn are that, while students continue
to favour NESs, more research is required to support proposals for
GEs
• With limited experience with & exposure to NNESs plus lack of
awareness of the role of English today & the changing representations
of speakers of the language, students are not making decisions based
on the availability of sound information
Adapted from:

Galloway, N. & Rose, H. (2015). Introducing Global Englishes. Abingdon:

Routledge.

Jenkins, J. (2009). World Englishes. A Resource Book for Students, 2nd

Edition. Abingdon: Routledge.