Download or read book Attitudes of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English Toward Various Regional and Social U.S. English Accents written by Stacey R. Dent and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a consistent stigma associated with nonstandard U.S. English accents, and language attitude studies have documented that both standard and nonstandard dialect speakers rate speakers of nonstandard accents lower than standard-accented speakers on a variety of personality characteristics. Whether nonnative speakers of English share these negative assessments of nonstandard accents is not clear. The present study investigates the attitudes of native as well as nonnative speakers of English toward various regional and social U.S. English accents and if length of stay in the U.S. has an effect on nonnative speakers' adopting language stereotypes similar to native speakers. Finally, the study seeks to determine if the subjects can correctly identify the accents and if identification has an effect on ratings for nonnative speakers. Three U.S. English accents, Midwestern, Southern, and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) were evaluated using a 7-point Likert scale by three groups of raters. The groups were native speakers of English, nonnative speakers of English present in the U.S. for six months or less, and nonnative speakers of English present in the U.S. between two and six years. After rating the speakers, the raters attempted to identify the accents of the speakers. The results showed that all three groups of raters evaluated the Midwestern-accented speech highest on all pairs of characteristics. Both groups of nonnative speakers had similar ratings to native speakers for Midwestern speech, only nonnative speakers in the U.S. for two or more years had similar ratings to native speakers for the Southern speech. Both groups of nonnative speakers rated AAVE-accented speech lower than native speakers. Nonnative speakers were less successful in identifying Midwestern and Southern-accented English, but were more successful in identifying AAVE-accented English. Skill at identification had little correlation to attitudes expressed by nonnative speakers. The results indicate that time spent in the U.S. is not a factor in adopting the notion of a prestige variety for nonnative speakers. The results also indicate that nonnative speakers become more sensitive to regional accents with extended time in the U.S., but that time is not a factor in nonnative speakers' developing bias toward social accents.