Thai university students’ attitudes towards UK, US, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Indian English

What is it about?

This large-scale study examines 204 Thai university students’ attitudes towards forms of UK, US, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Indian English, provided by highly proficient female speakers. The study also examines the extent to which Thai students’ perceptions of their native language (Thai) and their gender influence their attitudes towards English language variation.

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Why is it important?

There is a dearth of research examining the sociolinguistics of English in Thailand. The present study investigated Thai students’ attitudes towards specific forms of English spoken in the UK, USA, Thailand and other areas of Asia. Analysis revealed significant differences in attitudes towards the seven English speech forms presented for evaluation on non-overlapping dimensions of competence and warmth, reflecting universal categories of social judgement uncovered by researchers working in the fields of social psychology and social cognition. Specifically, Thai students rated all three UK and US speakers of English highly in terms of competence. As discussed above, this finding is broadly compatible with the results of studies conducted in other Asian contexts, where L1 speakers of both standard and non-standard varieties of English speakers were also evaluated most positively. The most striking finding relates to the high levels of both competence and warmth afforded to the Thai speaker of English. This result supports the notion that Thai users of English retain a clear sense of linguistic security regarding the form of English which they are themselves most likely to speak and, in turn, provides evidence that they view Thai English speech, or at least the fluent speech of the Thai speaker of English included in this study, as an appropriate, and perhaps desirable, norm of English language use for L1 speakers of Thai.