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The Evaluations of Native English Speakers Toward Two Native and Two Non-Native English Accents: A Study of Language Attitudes Toward English Accents

In English

Författare

  • Mawj Ahmed Mahmood

Summary, in English

This paper examined the language attitudes of native English speakers recruited from Reddit toward two native and two non-native English accents using the verbal-guise technique and speech audio files from The Speech Accent Archive (Weinberger, 2017). The two native English accents are General American (GA) and Received Pronunciation (RP). The two non-native English accents are German- and Mexican-accented English. The discrepancy in results from previous research on accent evaluations was interesting and called for further investigation. The survey was created in Google Forms to assess native English speakers’ attitudes toward four English accents. Social attractiveness was evaluated using two traits: friendliness and niceness. Intelligence, education, and competence were used to assess social status. These traits were rated on a 5-point Likert scale. Social class and character roles are categorical variables, assessed through separate questions with multiple-choice answers. Participants were native English speakers from various countries. They were recruited from three Reddit pages: r/SampleSize, r/ENGLISH, and r/SurveyExchange. The findings revealed participants’ attitudes toward different accents. An evaluation hierarchy emerged among the four accents. Depending on the traits measured from the social attractiveness and social status dimensions, a standard accent generally received higher ratings than a foreign accent. However, closer examination revealed that no native accent received the highest ratings; instead, one native accent received the top rating while the other was rated in the middle. These results support previous studies on language attitudes and accent evaluations, which have been based on social attractiveness and social status scales. The findings reinforce the notion that attitudes vary depending on the spoken accent, as reflected in the participants’ ratings.

Publiceringsår

2022

Språk

Engelska

Dokumenttyp

Examensarbete för kandidatexamen

Ämne

  • Languages and Literatures

Nyckelord

  • Language attitudes
  • Evaluations of English accents
  • Standard and non-standard English accents
  • Native English speakers
  • Social attractiveness
  • Social status
  • Social class
  • Character roles

Handledare

  • Sara Farshchi (PhD Candidate)