| This study investigated the attitudes of Native and Non-Native Speakers towards non-native accents of English. The providers of the non-native accents were 8 second language speakers of English of Eastern European, Latino, South-East Asian and Arabic first languages, including 4 males and 4 females. The participants were 32 Native Speakers of General American English and 39 Non-Native Speakers from East and South-East Asia.; The instrument included bi-polar adjective scales, divided into two main factors, Manner of Speaking and The Speaker, as well as Likert scale and open-ended questions about the importance of pronunciation and structure in the acquisition of a second language. The data were analyzed through univariate and multivariate analyses of variance and content analyses.; The results revealed quantitative and qualitative differences between the Native Speakers and the Non-Native Speakers in their attitudes to and perceptions of non-native accents of English. The Non-Native Speakers showed a significantly more positive attitude to the non-native accents of English, as well as a high awareness of the difficulties involved in acquiring a non-native accent. The effect of Gender was slightly significant, as the Female subjects revealed a more positive attitude to four of the eight non-native x gender accents. There were also interesting Nationality and Gender related differences regarding the most liked and the least liked individual accents. The findings are interpreted in view of the familiarity principle in light of language typology, second language learning experience, gender and ethnic empathy. Factors of socio-political nature were associated with negative familiarity, mainly observed on the Latino and Arab Male accents. |
