Japanese students' accurate identification of native English positively affects status judgements

What is it about?

The present study investigated the perceptions of 558 Japanese university students of six varieties of English speech: Scottish Standard English, Glasgow Vernacular, Heavily-accented Japanese English, Moderately-accented Japanese English, Southern US English and Mid-West US English (General American). The results indicated that whilst evaluations of speakers of the Scottish and US English forms were particularly positive in terms of status, a Japanese speaker of heavily–accented English was rated most favourably in terms of social attractiveness. The findings from an additional dialect recognition question demonstrated that accurate identification had a significant positive effect upon the perceived status of native varieties of English, suggesting a tendency amongst the informants to look to native speakers to provide ‘notions of correctness’. The results also imply that Japanese learners retain representations of varieties of English speech and draw upon this resource, whether consciously or unconsciously, in order to identify and evaluate (speakers of) these speech varieties.

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Why is it important?

Language attitude researchers have tended to presume that informants who listen to and evaluate stimulus speech have accurately identified the varieties in question as socially or regionally recognised forms. There have, however, been recent calls to include a dialect recognition item in questionnaires, where participants are presented with voice samples and subsequently asked to rate them. The main objective of the present study was to ascertain how accurately and consistently Japanese learners of English could correctly identify specific varieties of English speech and, given the above, to determine the influence (if any) that mis/identifications had on the learners’ attitudes towards varieties of English speech. Multivariate analysis of the attitude study data indicated that whilst evaluations of speakers of UK and US English were particularly positive in terms of status, a Japanese speaker of heavily–accented English was rated most favourably in terms of social attractiveness. The findings from an additional dialect recognition question demonstrated that accurate identification had a significant positive effect upon the perceived status of native varieties of English, suggesting a tendency amongst the informants to look to native speakers to provide ‘notions of correctness’. The findings of the present study also imply that the Japanese learners also retain representations of varieties of English and drew upon this resource, whether consciously or unconsciously, in order to both complete the recognition task and to assign individual characteristics to the speakers in the verbal-guise section of the study.