Learners' attitudes to standard vs non-standard South African English accents of their teachers

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is interested in the relationship between accent and hearers' perception of the speaker. Itinvestigates the kinds of stereotypes related to phonological features of the speaker's language.Specifically this thesis focused on the perceptions that high school girls have of their Mathematicsteachers who speak English with a non-standard accent. The general aims of the study were toestablish whether high school girls perceived non-standard English speaking Mathematics teachersnegatively and, if so, whether this perception changed as the girls mature.Twenty-seven Grade 8 learners and 14 Grade 12 learners from a private English-medium school inthe Gauteng Province of South Africa participated in this study. The school attracts learners fromthe affluent socio-economic group, and the majority of the learners are white (76.8%) and firstlanguage speakers of English (86%). These participants completed questionnaires using thematched-guise technique (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner and Fillenbaum 1960) to determine theirperceptions of six accents. Five speakers were recorded reading the same Mathematics lesson inEnglish. One reader read the same passage twice, using a so-called Standard South African Englishaccent for one recording and a second language accent of an isiZulu mother tongue speaker for thesecond recording.The results of this investigation indicate that high school girls are inclined to stereotype teachersaccording to the teachers' accents. Some of the characteristics attributed to the non-standardEnglish speaking teachers were positive, but generally learners held a negative perception of suchteachers. There was very little change in this perception from Grade 8 to Grade 12.Of particular importance in the National Curriculum Statement for Grades 10 to 12 is that learnersemerge from this phase of their schooling being 'sensitive to issues of diversity such as poverty,inequality, race, gender, language, age, disability and other factors (www.sabceducation.co.za/).The school where the research was conducted has addressed diversity in numerous ways in anattempt to prepare the learners for life in multilingual and multicultural South Africa. That theGrade 12 learners in this study, whether first language speakers of English or not, still displayaccent prejudice suggests that the life skills objectives are not adequately met and that this form ofprejudice needs to be addressed in more creative ways.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University