LANGUAGE ATTITUDE

LANGUAGE ATTITUDE
“Research on Attitude
towards Accent”
Deny A. Kwary
www.kwary.net
Attitude towards Accent 
Intelligence

Giles & Powesland (1975). Speech Style and
Social Evaluation.
• Matched-guised technique: an investigator who
could speak either Birmingham accent and RP
spoke to two groups of 17-year-olds about
psychology, using one accent with one group
and the other accent with the other group.
• Result: The investigator was rated higher in his
RP in terms of competence, intelligence, and
industrious.
Attitude towards Accent  Politics


Giles and Ryan (1982): concluded that a certain accent
can change public opinion and show the speaker’s social
class.
• Matched-guised technique: Four groups of people were
asked to listen to a recording about capital punishment.
• The first group listened to the argument in RP;
• The second group listened to it in South Wales accent;
• The third in Somerset accent;
• The fourth in Birmingham accent.
Result: The RP speaker is considered to have higher
competency the local accent speaker.
However, the respondents tend to agree with arguments of
the local accent speaker.
Attitude towards Accent 
English Course Business


Birnei (1998)
• Location: Bavaria
• Respondents: Business people
• Result: Most of the respondents prefer
studying in an English course which uses
British English and that of American English.
Gibb (1999)
• Location: Korea
• Respondents: Business People and Students
• Result: Most of the respondents prefer
studying in an English course which uses
American English and that of British English.
Attitude towards Accent 
Achievement in Learning a
Foreign Language
Lambert (1968):
The group of students that have
positive attitude towards the
Foreign Language get better
achievements.
Attitudes towards Accent 
Children’s preference

Rosenthal (1974): Attitudes of children towards
SE and AAVE.
• Location: Florida
• Respondents: 136 school children between
the ages three to six.
• The children saw two identical boxes, with a
tape-recorder and a present hidden.
• 73% of the children expected a present from
the voice with SE.
Language Attitude Research in
Indonesia

Gunarwan (1983): The language attitude of the
students at the University of Indonesia towards
Standard and Non-standard Indonesian
language.

Suhardi (1991): The language attitude of the
students and scholars at the University of
Indonesia towards Indonesian language, local
language and foreign language
Moeliono (1988) listed six negative attitudes which
prevent the standardization of Indonesian
language:
1. Underestimating the needs of quality standards.
2. Neglecting the additions of new vocabulary.
3. Appreciating a foreign language.
4. Disobeying the grammar rules.
5. Not giving any attention towards language
research and development.
6. Using the sentence pattern of a foreign
language.

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