English Majors’ Attitudes toward Native and Non-Native English Accents and their Role in Identity Formation

This study investigated the attitudes of undergraduate and graduate English majors toward native and non-native English accents and explored how these attitudes influenced their identity formation. It aimed to determine participants’ perceptions of the status and importance of different English accents, self-evaluation of their own accents, and the relationship between accents and identity. Applying an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, the study integrated a questionnaire administered to 105 students (54 first-year undergraduates and 51 M.A. graduates) at a public university in Bangladesh, followed by focus group discussions (FGDs) analyzed through constructivist grounded theory. Quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and Welch’s (1947) two-tailed t-test to identify variations between the two groups of participants, while qualitative data were examined through manual coding. Findings demonstrated that participants generally rejected the notion of a native English accent as the definitive ideal and did not regard a non-native English accent as an inadequate version. Nevertheless, quantitative data ascertained that participants perceived a native English accent as socially prestigious, suggesting a desire to acquire it, while qualitative discussions revealed deeper power dynamics (Foucault, 1962; Bourdieu, 1991) rooted in colonial history (Connell, 2007; Hamid, 2022), with participants expressing a preference for developing a standard regional accent that preserved their linguistic heritage and aligned with local vocal norms. Spectrum, Volume 19, June 2024: 13-25