'I like my accent but horizontal ellipsis ': EFL teachers' evaluation of English accent varieties

Misir H., Gürbüz N.

LANGUAGE AWARENESS, cilt.31, sa.4, ss.450-469, 2022 (AHCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 31 Sayı: 4
  • Basım Tarihi: 2022
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/09658416.2021.1965153
  • Dergi Adı: LANGUAGE AWARENESS
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, Communication & Mass Media Index, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Linguistic Bibliography, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, DIALNET
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.450-469
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: English accent varieties, English as a foreign language, teacher perceptions, Turkish language teachers, verbal-guise technique, NATIVE SPEAKER NORMS, WORLD ENGLISHES, LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY, ATTITUDES, PRONUNCIATION, PERCEPTIONS, PREFERENCES, SOLIDARITY, LEARNERS, CHINESE
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

In this study, we investigated Turkish EFL teachers' level of recognition of English accent varieties and their attitudes regarding three common domains, status (e.g. educatedness, intelligence), solidarity (friendliness, kindness), and dynamism (confidence, talkativeness). We also explored the English teachers' choices of English accents in various language-using contexts. Through the verbal-guise technique, we were able to evaluate the teachers' language attitudes towards accents, yet we also integrated a questionnaire to further examine the issue for teacher attitudes and ideologies concerning language education. The findings revealed that recognition of English accent varieties was greater with American English and the local accented English. The ratings of status, solidarity, and dynamism showed that speakers' accents had a strong effect on how the language teachers treated them. Few teachers reported to include various English accents in language courses due to the teachers' strong preference for L1 accent varieties in the class. Similarly, the L1 accents were ranked significantly higher in the formal contexts, the teaching model in particular. In sum, the accent matter remains to be a meaningful variable for the production of normative language ideologies in the language education market. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2021.1965153 .