Attitudes of Native and Nonnative Speakers toward Selected Regional Accents of U.S. English

Abstract

Although some research has been done on the attitudes of native speakers of English toward various regional varieties of U.S. English, few studies have been done on nonnative speakers' reactions toward regional accents. This empirical investigation sought to determine the attitudes of both L1 and L2 listeners toward specific regional accents of U.S. English and to compare and/or contrast those attitudes. The subjects were 97 university students from Florida Institute of Technology, half of whom were L2 listeners (advanced ESL students) and half of whom were L1 listeners. Through the use of a modification of the matched guise technique, the students listened to tapes of the same passage read by a male and female native speaker from each of the following accent groups: (a) southern (South Carolina), (b) northern (New York), and (c) Midwestern (Illinois). Respondents then recorded their attitudes about each of the readers using a Likert scale. The results indicated that the judgments of L2 subjects differed from those of L1 subjects and that L2 subjects were able to perceive differences in regional accents of U.S. English.