Robert M. McKenzie, Northumbria University

1. Robert M. McKenzie, Northumbria University Speech evaluation, intergroup relations and the Internationalisation of Japanese Higher Education Applied Linguistics and Cross Cultural Communication Invited Speaker Series, Newcastle University 28th January 2014

2. Attitudes in Social Psychology 1 • ‘An attitude is a summary evaluation of an object or thought’ (Bohner and Wanke, 2002: 5) • Contains cognitive, affective and conative (and genetic) components • Attitudes are sufficiently stable to allow for identification/measurement • Attitude intensity important to measure as stronger attitudes more likely to affect judgements, guide behaviour, persist and be resistant to change

3. Attitudes in Social Psychology 2 • Negative attitudes, i.e., prejudice, towards perceived age, gender, nationality, race or sexual orientation of individual(s) under consideration can have wider social, economic and educational implications • Advances in Social Psychology focussing on the strength of the empirical relationship between explicit attitudes (i.e., conscious and deliberative) and implicit attitudes (i.e., unconscious and/or automatic) (Bassili and Brown, 2005) • To date, little research, whether involving native and/or non-native speakers, specifically measuring implicit and explicit attitudes towards linguistic variation

4. Implications of language attitudes/folklinguistic perceptions • Linguistic: non-linguists’ perceptions of language variation define speech communities. Language attitudes help explain the extent to which (features of) specific languages/varieties spread, decay or are maintained as well as affect the extent to which speakers of particular linguistic forms participate in Higher Education (see McKenzie and Osthus, 2011) • Non-linguistic: attitudes towards different language varieties transform linguistic difference into linguistic deficit (or advantage) and can, in turn, influence: • job interview outcome (Rakic et al., 2011); • perceived guilt/innocence of court defendant (Dixon and Mahoney, 2004) • perceived persuasiveness of the message (Powesland and Giles, 1975) • schoolteachers’ perceptions of students’ abilities (Seligman, et al.,1972) • (US –born) students’ ratings of NNS lecturers’ classes (Rubin and Smith, 1990) • acceptance/stigma of specific immigrant groups (see Gluszek and Dovidio, 2010)

5. Previous language attitude research: native speakers • (Speakers of) standard varieties of English speech tend to be evaluated positively in terms of status/prestige /correctness (e.g., intelligence, confidence) • (Speakers of) non-standard varieties tend to be evaluated positively in terms of solidarity/ social attractiveness (e.g., honesty, friendliness) • Distinctions between evaluations demonstrated in a number of studies in a wide range of inner circle countries. • (i) reflect intrinsic superiority/inferiorities of language (variety), e.g., some languages or language varieties are more: • Correct; • Logical; • Complex; • Aesthetic than others or • ii) reflection of social connotations: that to listen to a language (variety) evoke attitudes (prejudices/stereotypes) about the perceived speech community

6. Previous language attitude research: L2 speakers • The language attitudes of L2 speakers are also of importance, especially in determining levels of success of the acquisition of the target language (Dornyei and Skehan, 2003), the choice of linguistic model which language learners choose to emulate and ultimately, the spread (or decline) of the languages or language varieties in question • Within Higher Educational contexts, findings from language attitude studies may help provide knowledge re intergroup relations between different groups of home and overseas students and, in turn, contribute to understanding of success (or not) of internationalisation agenda(s) • Some recent research measuring social evaluations of Japanese students towards forms of English spoken by speakers from US, UK and Japan • Findings from recent studies that Japanese users are most favourable towards standard and non-standard forms of UK/US English in terms of status, but express greater solidarity with identifiable forms of Japanese English (e.g., Cargile et al., 2006; Evans and Imai, 2011; Sasayama, 2013; McKenzie, 2008a, 2008b, 2010)

7. Status: F(5,785)= 266.90, p<0.05; eta squared= 0.655 Mid-West United States English Southern United States English Glasgow Vernacular Scottish Standard English M-accented Japanese English H-accented Japanese English Mean ratings: highest possible score=7 and lowest possible score=1 Underline indicates significant difference (p<0.05) Social Attractiveness: F(5,785)= 57.09, p<0.05; eta squared= 0.283 H-accented Japanese English Glasgow Vernacular Southern United States English M-accented Japanese English Scottish Standard English Mid-West United States English McKenzie (2010): Speaker Evaluations: Ranking according to Repeated Measures ANOVA and Pairwise Comparisons (N=558)

8. But…. • Surprising that few studies concentrating specifically upon NNS ratings of L1 and L2 English (other than Japanese English) in Japan • Especially given recent internationalisation policies adopted by Japanese universities, especially institutions who form the Global 30 Project (MEXT, 2010) • And the resultant growth in overseas students, mainly from South and East Asia, who alongside Japanese students, increasingly undertake courses taught solely in English (McKenzie, 2013; McKenzie and Gilmore, in progress) • Internationalisation or Asianisation of Japanese Higher Education (Askew, 2011) • Worries about the extent to which it is possible for Universities in Japan to become more ‘internationally orientated’ (see Yonezawa, 2010) • Since language attitudes are reliable indicators of attitudes towards particular communities of speakers, folklinguistic research amongst Japanese University students can indicate: • levels of acceptance of /prejudice against specific groups of overseas students • potential integration /exclusion of these groups of students • Accordingly, help indicate the potential success (or not) of the internationalisation project

9. Present Study: Japanese University students’ attitudes towards L1 and L2 English speech varieties: Research questions • 1) What are Japanese students’ implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes towards UK, US, Japanese and other Asian varieties of English? • 2) To what extent is there a relationship between Japanese students’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards English speech? • 3) What are the implications of the findings for the internationalisation of Japanese Higher Education • 4) Are Japanese users of English able to identify varieties of English speech? • 5) To what extent, and in what ways, do the language attitudes of Japanese students differ from those held by UK students (McKenzie, under review)?

10. Map task : Recordings Please give directions from START to the CASTLE start

11. Speech stimulus • From a larger database of digital recordings of the English varieties under consideration, recordings of seven speakers were selected for evaluation • Three L1 varieties • Mid-West United States English (MWUSE) (GA); • Southern United States English (SUSE); • Scottish Standard English (SSE) • Four L2 forms of speech • Japanese English (JE); • Thai English (TE); • Chinese English (CE); • Indian English (IE) • All four L2 speakers had attained at least a postgraduate degree taught in English and thus had achieved a very advanced level of proficiency in the language

12. Speakers and speech recordings • All female speakers • to address gender imbalance in language attitude research generally • to provide control over potentially extraneous variables in present study • Speakers broadly similar in age (23-27 years old) • Validated as most representative of the chosen varieties, from a larger database of speakers, by individuals from the speech communities in question • Text ‘factually neutral’. Screened for obvious references to speakers’ nationality, social class, regional provenance or variety of English spoken and for comparable voice qualities • Important to consider that each of the samples is merely an example of that particular form of English and that age, gender and other variation exists

13. Informants • 158 students Japanese nationals studying at 6 national and private universities in the Kanto, Kansai or Kyushu areas of Japan • Mean age=20.35, SD=2.03 • All participants were studying English at the time of the fieldwork and had attained at least an upper intermediate level of English proficiency

14. Research instrument, section 1: Verbal-guise study You will hear 7 people give directions to a castle. Listen to the recordings and put a cross on the line to describe the speaker.  For example, if you perceive speaker A to be very pleasant, you may put a cross near ‘pleasant’

15. Research instrument, section 2:Explicit attitudes and social information 1) I like to hear varieties of Japanese (多様な日本語) different from standard Japanese (標準日本語) Yes ……….……….……….……….……….……….……….……… No How would you describe the speakers of these varieties of Japanese? _______________________________________________________ 2) I like to hear non-native varieties of English (英語を母国語としない人の英語) Yes ……….……….……….……….……….……….……….……… No How would you describe the speakers of non-native varieties of English? _______________________________________________________ • Gender ____ Age__________ Nationality____________________ • Native Language (母国語)________________________________ •  Variety of Japanese spoken (話されている日本語の種類) ________________________________ •  Variety of English spoken (話されている英語の種類) _________________________________ • Where do you come from? _________________________________ •  Where do you live now? _________________________________

16. Results Implicit Attitudes 1: Preliminary Analysis • Principal components analysis again revealed the presence of two components with eigen values in excess of 1.0; (57.9% of total variance) social attractiveness (solidarity) (33.4% of variance) and status (24.5% of variance)

17. Results: Implicit Attitudes: Speaker evaluations: ranking according to repeated measures ANOVA and pairwise comparisons • Status: F(6,152)=23.08, p<0.0001; eta squared=0.477 Southern US English 49.53 (12.1) Mid-West US English 44.28 (12.8) Scottish Standard English 44.24 (11.2) Japanese English 43.01 (11.1) Thai English 41.93 (10.9) Chinese English 37.77 (11.8) Indian English 36.64 (10.3) • Mean ratings: highest possible score=80 and lowest possible score=1 (SD in paretheses) • Underline indicates significant difference (p<0.05) • Social Attractiveness: F(6,121)= 19.42, p<0.001; eta squared=0.4891 Japanese English 51.65 (10.5) Southern US English 50.96 (11.6) Scottish Standard English 47.65 (11.9) Thai English 46.70 (11.8) Chinese English 41.70 (11.8) Mid-West US English 41.08 (14.4) Indian English 40.51 (10.5)

18. Discussion: Implicit Attitudes, Verbal-guise study • Status • Very clear hierarchy: Japanese University students evaluated (speakers of) US and Scottish (i.e., L1) speech more positively than (all 4 speakers of) Asian English – Indian/Chinese speakers of English most stigmatised - but no significant differences • Possible reflection of perceptions of speech categorised as non-native as (inherently) incorrect (see also McKenzie, 2010 re native speaker ideology) • Social Attractiveness • Clear hierarchy demonstrates most favourable evaluations of (speakers of) Japanese followed by SUSE, SSE and Thai English: may reflect solidarity with speakers of Japanese speech (see also McKenzie, 2010) (and Thai English and non-elite forms of US English) in comparison with speakers from South and East Asia • Most negative evaluations of English spoken by Chinese and Indian suggest these groups of speakers most stigmatised. Similar to McKenzie’s (2010) study amongst Japanese students, MWUSE (i.e., General American) again downgraded in terms of social attractiveness

19. Results: Explicit Attitude study 1 • Mean Evaluations and Standard Deviations: Japanese Language Diversity and Non-native English speech (N=158) • No significant correlations were found between explicit attitudes towards international English speech (mean=41.75) and implicit attitudes towards the ratings of the four L2 speakers from Asia: • Status (mean=42.62) (r=0.053, p>0.05, p=0.55); • Social attractiveness (mean=46.03) (r=0.10, p>0.05, p=0.26)

20. Results: Explicit Attitudes 2a (analysis in progress) • Responses categorisations to Qs: ‘How would you describe (speakers of) non-native English speech?’ (initially in pilot study, Asian English speech) • Analysed through theoretical thematic analysis because: large sample; specific question; and collected through face-to-face interaction (see Braun and Clarke, 2006) • Negative talk about non-native English speech (49.4% of informants): 2 categories • i) Non-native speech is incorrect (22.8%) • The people who are out of ‘right’ English (informant 93) • Because, for some, listening to non-native speech induces explicitly negative emotions • Not as clear as native. I need to concentrate more so I don’t feel comfortable (66) • Incorrect judgments generally related to phonological features (and not lexical/morpho-syntactic features) • People who speak English with incorrect pronunciation, not clearly (59) • Not smooth. Broken (114)

21. Results: Explicit Attitudes 2b • Several informants also identified specific areas where English, spoken by non-native speakers of the language, is more correct or less correct • I enjoy the varieties of English. However, I am sometimes frustrated by the English spoken by Asian people (83) • Europeans tend to be more fluent and have better pronunciation compared to Asians (74) • ii) Non-native English speech lacks intelligibility (26.6%) • Tendency to emphasise lack of previous exposure (other than Japanese English) • I learned only native English (especially American) so non-native English is difficult for me to understand and is unfamiliar with me (148) • r, t sounds difficult, complicated (127)

22. Results: Explicit Attitudes 2c • Positive Talk about non-native English speech (29.1%): again 2 categories • i) Non-native English speech is more intelligible (10.1%) • Often based upon a deficit model: non-native users speak a simplified version of English, especially relating to speech rate and connected speech • I can easily hear the words if people who are non-native speaker speak English (17) • They speak English not so rapid, so I can hear and understand what they want to tell (147) • ii) NNE speech indexes different linguistic, cultural and national identities (19.0%) • The largest positive unit of analysis (i.e., theme) related to descriptions of different forms of L2 English as reflections of group identity • Their own countries’ English so it is natural that people speak various English (61) • For some, positive feelings towards non-native English speech extended to explicit expressions of ingroup loyalty with their speakers • Like me, they are learning English. Hard working and intelligent (19) • I’m Japanese, the speakers are similar to me (154)

23. Results: Explicit Attitudes 2d • Neutral Talk about Non-native English Speech (12.0%) • Considered neutral in the sense that the responses are principally descriptions of the linguistic features of the speech (rather than social evaluations of the speakers) • Comments regarding the pronunciation of L2 English speakers featured most prominently • All people have a distinctive accent (92) •   Some informants also perceived an influence of the speakers’ L1 on their English, with several again stressing distinctions between different forms of L2 English • These varieties come from accent or vocabulary of their native tongue (65) • They speak with their own rhythms, pronunciation and strongly influenced by their mother tongue (86) • No response • 15 informants (9.5%) declined to offer any response to the explicit attitude question

24. Conclusions 1 • Lay rhetoric surrounding language diversity, and the subsequent stigmatisation of specific linguistic forms of speech, can have important social consequences for speakers, both in Japan and elsewhere • Linguistic discrimination perhaps especially impactful within educational contexts • The findings of language attitude research, conducted over the last 50 years, has consistently demonstrated that evaluations of speech forms reflect stereotypes of and attitudes towards the perceived group(s) of speakers of the language or variety • So, Japanese-born students’ attitudes towards other Asian English varieties likely reflect stereotypes and levels of acceptance (or not) of specific groups of overseas students • The explicit and implicit findings are convergent in a number of areas, for instance, regarding perceptions of L1 forms of spoken English, and specifically US English, as the most correct • Both sets of findings also point to relatively unfavourable evaluations of the status of L2 English speech more broadly, and most especially forms of English spoken in Asia, including Japanese English

25. Conclusions 2 • More positively, there is strong evidence from both the implicit and explicit responses which demonstrate solidarity with fellow Japanese speakers of English • The consistency found between (broadly negative) implicit and explicit attitudes towards different varieties of English speech spoken in South and East Asia, with the exception of Japanese English, suggest that Japanese students’ attitudes towards these speech forms are strong, relatively stable and resistant to change (see Karpen, Jia and Rydell, 2011) • Explicit comments also indicate that phonological features are most likely to act as vocal cues for the identification of speech as L2 English • and, in turn, index negative evaluations of the correctness of these English speech forms

26. Conclusions 3 • Results seem to have implications for the internationalisation agenda within Japanese Higher Education and the Global 30 project • Low evaluations of (other) Asian English speakers are somewhat worrisome given the current prevalence and continued increase in numbers of students attending Japanese universities from the South and East of Asia • Suggest broadly negative intergroup relations between the Japanese cohort and groups of Asian students • Thus, unlikely to result in frequent and successful intergroup contact, both communicatively and in sociopsychological terms, between Japanese students and students recruited from other Asian nations within and outwith the Japanese university context: potential psychological segregation/isolation of student groups • Questions the extent to which the great majority of overseas students are able to fully integrate into Japanese university system • Ultimately, threaten the success of the internationalisation project within Japanese Higher Education (see McKenzie and Gilmore, in progress)

27. References 1 • Askew, D. (2011) The Japanese University and internationalisation: The global 30 project, foreign students and institutional survival. Asia Pacific World 21(1): 95-120. • Bassili, J.N. and R. Brown (2005) Implicit and explicit attitudes: Research, challenges and theory. In The Handbook of Attitudes, edited by Albarracin, D., B.T. Johnson and M.P. Zanna. London: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 543-576. • Bohner, G. and M. Wanke (2002) Attitudes and Attitude Change. Hove: Psychology Press. • Braun, V. and V. Clarke (2006) Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3: 77-101. • Cargile, A.C., E. Maeda, J. Rodriguez and M. Rich (2010) ‘Oh you speak English so well!’ US American listeners’ perceptions of ‘foreigness’ among non-native speakers. Journal of Asian American Studies 13(1): 59-79. • Dixon, J.A. and B. Mahoney (2004) The effect of accent and evaluation and evidence on a suspect’s perceived guilt and criminality. Journal of Social Psychology 144(1): 63-73. • Dornyei, Z .and P. Skehan (2003) Individual differences in L2 learning. In C.J. Doughty and M.H. Long (Eds), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 589-630. • Evans, B. and T. Imai (2011) ‘If we say English, that means America’: Japanese students’ perceptions of varieties of English. Language Awareness 20(4): 315-326.

28. References 2 • Gluszek, A. and J.F. Dovidio (2010) The way they speak: Psychological perspective on the stigma of nonnative accents in communication. Personality and Social Psychology Review 14(2): 214-237. • Karpen, S.C., L. Jia and R.J. Rydell (2011) Discrepancies between implicit and explicit attitude measures as an indicator of attitude strength. European Journal of Social Psychology 42(1): 24-29. • McKenzie, R.M. (2008a) Social factors and non-native attitudes towards varieties of spoken English. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 18(1): 63-88. • McKenzie, R.M. (2008b) The role of variety recognition in Japanese university students attitudes’ towards English speech varieties . Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 29(2): 139-153. • McKenzie, R.M. (2010) The Social Psychology of English as a Global Language. Dordrecht: Springer. • McKenzie, R.M. (2013) Changing perceptions? A variationist sociolinguistic perspective on native speaker ideologies and standard English in Japan. In Houghton, S. and D. Rivers (Eds), Native Speakerism in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 219-230. • McKenzie, R.M.(under review) UK University students’ folk perceptions of global variation in English: The role of explicit and implicit attitudes.

29. References 3 • McKenzie, R.M. and A. Gilmore (in progress) “The people who are out of right English”: Japanese University students’ perceptions of linguistic diversity. • McKenzie, R.M. and D. Osthus (2011) That which we call a rose by any other name would sound as sweet: Folk perceptions, status and language variation. AILA Review 24: 100-115. • Powesland, P. and H. Giles (1975) Persuasiveness and accent-message incompatibility. Human Relations 28(1): 85-93. • Rakic, T., M.C. Steffens and A. Mummendey (2011) When it matters how you pronounce it: the influence of regional accents on job interview outcome. British Journal of Social Psychology 102: 868-883. • Rubin, D.L. and K.A. Smith (1990) Effects of accent, ethnicity and lecture topic on undergraduates’ perceptions of nonnative English –speaking teaching assistants. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 14: 337-353. • Sasayama, S. (2013) Japanese college students’ attitudes towards Japan English and American English. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(3), 264-278. • Seligman, C., G. Tucker and W. Lambert (1972) The effect of speech style and other attributes on teachers’ attitudes towards pupils. Language in Society 1: 131-142. • Yonezawa, A. (2010) Much ado about ranking: Why can’t Japanese universities internationalize? Japan Forum 22 (1/2): 121-137.

30. Acknowledgment: Financial support for the study kindly provided by: