Investigating non-native language attitudes : Hungarian university students' attitudes toward standard and non-standard American English accents

Püski, Gyöngyi (2018) Investigating non-native language attitudes : Hungarian university students' attitudes toward standard and non-standard American English accents. BA/Bsc, Szegedi Tudományegyetem.

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Abstract

Hungarian EFL university student’s non-native language attitudes are investigated in this paper toward standard and non-standard accents of American English. The responses of 52 students of the University of Szeged (26 English majors and 26 non-English majors) were recorded using questionnaires with rating scales, yes/no questions and open question items. Voice samples of male and female Standard American English-accented and male, nonstandard, Southern, Smoky Mountain English-accented speech were played for the respondents using the matched guise and the verbal guise techniques. The target accents were separated by a sample of Canadian English-accented speech, which is also part of the data analysis due to its unforeseeable significance. This thesis focuses on English and non-English majors’ ability to differentiate and identify accents of American English, how their attitudes are influenced by American language attitudes, the differences between the language attitudes of the two respondent groups, and what role the speaker’s gender plays in the evaluations. The findings of this thesis prove that English majors are able to differentiate and identify accents of American English more successfully than non-English majors. This paper discusses that the respondents’ attitudes are affected by, but not identical with American language attitudes. The status-solidarity polarity of standard and non-standard speech reported in American language attitude papers is not observable in the respondents’ attitudes. American language attitudes have a non-comprehensive but explicit influence on the attitudes of English majors, and a less observable, implicit influence on the attitudes of non-English majors. The results show that non-English majors have more positive attitudes toward the non-standard Smoky Mountain English-accented speech than English majors. The speaker’s gender has a complex influence on the respondents’ evaluations: the male is preferred in the overall mean scores, but several individual rating scales favor the female speaker of the same accent.

Institution

Szegedi Tudományegyetem

Faculty

Faculty of Arts

Department

Angol Tanszék

Discipline

Humanities

Institute

Angol-Amerikai Intézet

Specialization

anglisztika

Supervisor(s)

Item Type:	Thesis (BA/Bsc)
Subjects:	06. Humanities
Depositing User:	szerkesztő BTK
Date Deposited:	2019. Apr. 29. 07:10
Last Modified:	2019. Apr. 30. 06:17
URI:	https://diploma.bibl.u-szeged.hu/id/eprint/74534

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