Attitudes toward World Englishes among Iranian English language learners

Abstract

The current study investigated the attitudes of 140 Iranian English language learners toward World Englishes. The participants were required to listen to recordings of the same natural speech from a series of speakers with five different accents. The results showed that the participants had a more positive attitude toward American and British English. On the other hand, African-American Vernacular English received the lowest level and Persian English and Australian English were in the middle of this scale. While American English was evaluated as the most socially attractive and African-American as the least socially attractive, British and African-American accents were evaluated as of the highest and lowest social status, respectively. The results further showed that, both American and British accents have high quality. Australian English was in the middle point while Persian and African-American accents were at the end of the scale, respectively.