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Students' Attitudes Toward Unfamiliar English Accents and Their L1

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Students' Attitudes Toward Unfamiliar English Accents and Their L1 MATSUURA・CHIBA : Students’ Attitudes Toward Unfamiliar Engl商ish学 A論cc集en ts a第nd8 T2h巻ei第r L14-号sp eak in2g0 B14ac年kgr3ou月nds 【 論 文 】 Students’ Attitudes Toward Unfamiliar English Accents and Their L1-speaking Backgrounds MATSUURA Hiroko and CHIBA Reiko Abstract This study investigates 173 university-level Japanese English learners’ attitudes toward unfamiliar English accents, and the relationships between their attitudes and such sociolinguistic factors as gender, L1 dialectal background and region of residence as well as listening ability that might affect their attitudes. These students, all of whom were from Eastern Japan, including the northern island of Hokkaido, were studying in their univer- sity either in (urban) Tokyo or in (rural) Fukushima. They were asked to listen to several Outer Circle English speakers and to indicate their evaluative impressions on the semantic differential scale. The results suggest that dialectal background is likely a significant factor that affects students’ evaluations of accents, whereas gen- der, region of residence, and listening ability are not. Interestingly, participants who had never spoken any regional dialects indicated more positive ratings toward unfamiliar English accents than those who were speakers of a regional dialect. Keywords : language attitudes, English accents, Japanese students, L1 dialectal backgrounds Introduction Literature reviews Japan has traditionally been categorized as an EFL country, where English is not used on a daily basis while it is taught as a compulsory school subject, and as McKenzie (2008) summarizes, targeted teaching models in English language classrooms were initially RP (pre-World War II), and later (post 1945) standard US English. Jenkins (2009), however, differentiates EFL and ELF (English as a lingua franca) identifying that the norm in the ELF situation is no longer provided by native speakers. She illustrates that in an EFL context, “deviations from ENL are seen as deficiencies,” while in an ELF con- text, “deviations from ENL are seen as legitimate differences.” It seems more appropriate if Japan is placed in the realm of ELF rather than EFL. In an ELF context, where speakers and listeners in the majority of cases do not share their linguistic backgrounds, there are accordingly a wide variety of combinations of speakers and listeners used in research. The following are examples of research conducted with reference to Japanese learners of English. Study Speakers Listeners Matsuura et al. (1994) Malaysian, Chinese Malaysian, Bangladeshi, Japanese Sri Lankan, Micronesian, Hong Kong Chiba et al. (1995) American, British, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Japanese Sri Lankan, Japanese ― 3 ― 商 学 論 集 第 82 巻第 4 号 Amano (2005) British, Japanese, Chinese, German Japanese Fraser (2006) American, British, Scottish, Zimbabwean, Japanese Taiwanese, Japanese Horie and Long (2007) Japanese (“native like”, “katakana English”) Japanese McKenzie (2008) Glasgow Standard, Glasgow vernacular, Japanese Southern US, Mid-West US, Japanese (“heavily” and “moderately” accented) Tokumoto and Shibata (2011) Korean, Malaysian, Japanese Korean, Malaysian, Japanese Rivers (2011) British, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Japanese Chinese, Indian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, American Matsuura (2012) American, Hong Kong Japanese Matsuura, Chiba, and Yamamoto (1994) explores Japanese university students’ attitudes toward dif- ferent varieties of English (Malaysian, Chinese Malaysian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Micronesian, Hong Kong), and a strong preference for American English with less preference for Asian varieties of English among Japanese listeners is identified. With the basis of the result of the 1994 study, Chiba, Matsuura, and Yamamoto (1995) further examines Japanese students’ attitudes toward different accents, both native and nonnative varieties. In the study, the students’ attitudes toward six different varieties of English (American, British, Hong Kong, Malaysian, Sri Lankan, and Japanese) are investigated. The findings are that Japanese students’ attitudes towards speakers of English from the Inner circle (the U.S. and the U. K.) are more positive than to those of the Outer circle countries (Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka) as well as those of Japan, and the familiarity endorses positive attitudes toward native varieties, i.e. Ameri- can and British. On the other hand, their familiarity with their own variety, i.e. English spoken by Japa- nese students, does not lead to a positive judgment. Amano (2005) conducts research on how Japanese listeners differentiate their evaluation depending on the region from which they might assume the speakers come. The speakers in the study include British, Japanese, Chinese and German, and the listeners are Japanese junior high, senior high, under- graduate and graduate students in Aichi and Gifu prefectures. As the results show, Japanese listeners are not necessarily able to identify the country from which the speaker is from. In fact, the Chinese speaker is judged as a native speaker by more than half of the listeners. When the speaker is judged as “native” or “native-like,” the listeners evaluate the speaker highly as “intelligent” or of “socially high status.” Amano also reports that the Japanese speaker is not evaluated highly as “friendly” and “trust- worthy” in the study, contrary to the result of past research (Ryan, Hewstone, & Giles, 1984), Fraser (2006) investigates Japanese high school students’ perception of accents from six different regions (the U.S., England, Scotland, Zimbabwe, Taiwan, and Japan). The subjects in her study consider the American variety high in status, and the Japanese variety is perceived as being easy to understand ; however, the Japanese variety is not appreciated nor desired as a model to achieve for the subjects. Horie and Long (2007) employs the matched-guise technique to examine Japanese speakers’ atti- tudes toward their own English. In the study, the listeners are Japanese university students, and the speakers are two Japanese university students (1 male and 1 female) who read the passage in the two dif- ferent versions : one with their best “native-like” pronunciation and the other with “katakana-English” pronunciation. The results indicate that “native-like” English is perceived to be more favorable in pro- nunciation, fluency, general English level, intelligence, confidence and looks while “katakana-English” is favored in modesty, similarity and familiarity. ― 4 ― MATSUURA・CHIBA : Students’ Attitudes Toward Unfamiliar English Accents and Their L1-speaking Backgrounds McKenzie (2008) also conducts a survey where speakers are native and nonnative speakers of 6 dif- ferent varieties, i.e. Glasgow Standard and vernacular, Southern US, Mid-West US, and heavily and mod- erately accented Japanese, and the listeners were Japanese students. He also finds rather negative attitudes of Japanese listeners toward Japanese accented English in terms of competence, yet he identi- fies their different reactions toward their own variety of English in terms of social attractiveness or solidarity. He points out that Japanese listeners indicated positive reactions to highly accented Japanese English indicating characteristics such as being gentle, pleasant, funny and modest. He summarizes those Japanese listeners’ conflicting attitudes towards their own variety, that is, rather negative in com- petence and positive in social attractiveness, in the following way. While “the more ‘Japanese’ the speaker is considered to sound, the less favorably she was evaluated” in competence, “the more ‘Japa- nese’ the speakers sounds, the more positively she will be judged” in social attractiveness. As the rea- son for these contrastive attitudes, influence of “media-transmitted stereotypes” and the little value given to Japanese accented English in the classroom are suggested for low evaluation in competence. On the other hand, a strongly accented Japanese English could make listeners have “in-group identity,” and hence they evaluate the accented Japanese English highly in solidarity. Tokumoto and Shibata (2011) explore the evaluative reactions of Japanese students to their own English, comparing them with those of other Asian groups (Korean and Malaysian). Their results indi- cate that Japanese negative attitudes toward their own variety were the strongest among the three groups, Malaysians being most positive toward their own variety. As Tokumoto and Shibata state, possi- ble reasons for Malaysians admiring their own variety of English include language situations in the country. Malaysia is a multilingual country where Malay, Chinese, Chinese dialects and Indian lan- guages are spoken, and also English is a second language that has been developed as its own variety. Rivers (2011) employs a semantic differential questionnaire to elicit Japanese students’ preference among different varieties of English (British, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, and American). The results show that rather strong Japanese students’ preference for native English speakers over those of other varieties of English, even when a speaker is not a native English speaker but the Japanese listener only perceives the speaker to be a native English speaker. Matsuura (2012) tries to identify possible factors that may influence the listeners’ preference for dif- ferent varieties of English. In the study, Japanese listeners’ reactions to Standard American English and Hong Kong English are examined. Among three
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