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Standard Englishes: What do American undergraduates think?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2002

Abstract

A survey of attitudes to other people's English among students at a university in the United States. Attitudes toward varieties of English as used in European contexts reflect changing viewpoints among their speakers (see Westergren Axelsson; Söderlund & Modiano; and Mobärg; see also Mobärg 1998). In this paper, I focus on the multifaceted attitudes toward varieties of English held by American undergraduate students in one department of English in the United States. I focus on perceptions of varieties of English, particularly on viewpoints of standard and acceptable spoken varieties of English. The wider aim of this project – described here in its early pilot stages – is to identify to what extent American undergraduates accept regional, national, and international varieties of English. A guiding question is whether American undergraduate students expand their view of which varieties of English are standard as the students gain more exposure to varieties that are not their own.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

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