UK university students’ folk perceptions of spoken variation in English: the role of explicit and implicit attitudes

What is it about?

Public attitudes towards language diversity are important since they reflect preferences and levels of prestige associated with particular speech communities. The present study utilises implicit and explicit attitude measures 194 students’ perceptions of six English speech varieties. The results demonstrated that whilst explicit attitudes towards linguistic variation were generally favourable, when presented with speech samples, listeners’ implicit evaluations of UK English varieties were significantly more positive, on both status and solidarity dimensions, when compared to forms of Asian English. The findings are discussed in relation to the internationalisation agenda within UK universities and the methodological investigation into the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes towards language variation. Keywords: language attitudes; folklinguistics; explicit vs. implicit attitudes; internationalisation; native vs. non-native speakers

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