The perception of speakers’ accents as a speech feature remains a relatively under-explored area within English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) research. Existing research has largely focused on native English speakers’ attitudes towards speech produced by non native speakers (“accented speech”), consistently showing that non native accents are often evaluated as less prestigious than native accents. This study investigated whether non native speakers of English display a perceptual bias in favour of native speaker accents and whether such a bias influences their evaluation of a text’s appeal, reliability, and overall level of interest. The participants were Croatian and French students with a CEFR B2 level of English proficiency, all enrolled in the same degree programme at the University of Zagreb. They evaluated specific text qualities using a five point bipolar Likert type scale. The collected data were analysed and compared using ANOVA. The findings supported the initial hypothesis and demonstrated that both Croatian and French L2 speakers of English rated the text read by a native English speaker as more appealing, more interesting, and more reliable than when it was read by a non native speaker (either Croatian or French). These results indicate a perceptual bias in favour of native speaker accents, suggesting that accent may significantly influence how L2 listeners assess the qualities of spoken texts.

Authors:
Dubravka Vilke-Pinter, University of Zagreb, Croatia

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Dubravka Vilke-Pinter is currently a senior lecturer teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.

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