Thai tertiary English majors’ attitudes towards and awareness of world Englishes

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Naratip Jindapitak
Adisa Teo

Abstract

The purposes of the present study were to investigate Thai university English learners’ attitudes towards and awareness of varieties of English, in relation to the ideology of English as an international language, which sees English in its pluralistic rather than the monolithic nature. The results show that the learners held more favorable attitudes towards mainstream inner-circle Englishes (American English and British English) than nonnative Englishes. In detail, the inner-circle speakers were perceived to possess better attributes (e.g., status, competence and personality) than nonnative speakers. The findings suggest that the English learners, in the present study, were linguistically prejudiced as they stereotyped others based on accent. In terms of accent awareness, the learners did not have sufficient awareness of varieties of English since the majority of them failed to identify the speakers’ country of origin from the speakers’ voices. It was found that the Thai English voice was the only stimulus that was successfully recognized by half of the informants, whereas the other varieties were inappropriately identified. This paper ends with proposing pedagogical suggestions and implications in raising learners’ awareness of the changing contexts of English so that they become more tolerant towards linguistic diversity.

Keywords: Language attitudes, EIL, accent, linguistic discrimination, World Englishes

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How to Cite
Jindapitak, N., & Teo, A. (2014). Thai tertiary English majors’ attitudes towards and awareness of world Englishes. Journal of Studies in the English Language, 7. Retrieved from https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jsel/article/view/21921
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Vol. 7 (2012)
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Articles
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Author Biographies

Naratip Jindapitak

Naratip Jindapitak is an English lecturer serving the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai Campus where he obtained a Master‘s Degree in Teaching English as an International Language (TEIL). His research interests include phonology of English as an international language, critical applied linguistics, world Englishes, linguistic identity and sociolinguistics.

Adisa Teo

Assoc.Prof. Dr.Adisa Teo, an associate professor of English, is serving the Department of Languages and Linguistics at Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai. She completed her Ph.D. from The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in USA. Her specialized areas of research include discourse analysis, teacher education, classroom-based research, course and material design and world Englishes.