Attitudes of Native Speakers of Thai Toward Speakers of Thai as a Second Language

Abstract

Languages and accents build understanding and relationships with other people. Therefore, understanding individual attitudes could contribute to more effective second language communication and learning motivation. This study investigated the attitudes of native speakers of Thai (NST) toward speakers of Thai as a second language: Chinese speakers of Thai as a second language (CST) and American speakers of Thai as a second language (AST). The matched-guise technique (Lambert et al., 1960) was used to assess data collected from 145 Thai NST evaluators through an online questionnaire. The analysis of the NST’s attitudes found ten characteristics from both the CST and AST were statistically significantly different at a 0.05 level, such as friendliness, diligence, generosity, self-confidence, responsibility, leadership, economic status, attractive accent, and language use appropriateness. The NSTs were found to have more positive attitudes toward the CSTs than the ASTs in many aspects, which may have been because of native language sound and social context factors.