{"title":"Immigrants’ attitudes towards varieties of American English","authors":"Jeongyi Lee, Keun Huh","doi":"10.1075/eww.22022.lee","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Native speakers of English commonly perceive some social variants of their language to be more prestigious than\n others. It is less clear, however, whether nonnative English speakers from immigrant communities come to internalize similar\n language stereotypes. The present study analysed, through a language attitude survey, a total of 40 Korean American college\n students’ reactions to tape-recorded samples of five socially stratified varieties of English commonly heard in the U.S. Results\n indicated that Korean American college students perceived a Standard American English (SAE) typical of broadcast English in the\n U.S. most favourably. Nonstandard varieties (regional and ethnic dialects), especially African American English, were judged as\n less favourable. SAE and its speaker was associated with positive qualities on rating scales, while nonstandard guises were rated\n less favourably on the same characteristics. This study provides a greater understanding of how different English varieties are\n perceived by an immigrant community in the U.S. and invites future studies of English language attitudes in other minority\n communities.","PeriodicalId":45502,"journal":{"name":"English World-Wide","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"English World-Wide","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.22022.lee","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Native speakers of English commonly perceive some social variants of their language to be more prestigious than
others. It is less clear, however, whether nonnative English speakers from immigrant communities come to internalize similar
language stereotypes. The present study analysed, through a language attitude survey, a total of 40 Korean American college
students’ reactions to tape-recorded samples of five socially stratified varieties of English commonly heard in the U.S. Results
indicated that Korean American college students perceived a Standard American English (SAE) typical of broadcast English in the
U.S. most favourably. Nonstandard varieties (regional and ethnic dialects), especially African American English, were judged as
less favourable. SAE and its speaker was associated with positive qualities on rating scales, while nonstandard guises were rated
less favourably on the same characteristics. This study provides a greater understanding of how different English varieties are
perceived by an immigrant community in the U.S. and invites future studies of English language attitudes in other minority
communities.
期刊介绍:
English World-Wide has established itself as the leading and most comprehensive journal dealing with varieties of English. The focus is on scholarly discussions of new findings in the dialectology and sociolinguistics of the English-speaking communities (native and second-language speakers), but general problems of sociolinguistics, creolistics, language planning, multilingualism and modern historical sociolinguistics are included if they have a direct bearing on modern varieties of English. Although teaching problems are normally excluded, English World-Wide provides important background information for all those involved in teaching English throughout the world.