Revisiting US Undergraduate Perceptions of Non-native English Varieties: From Millennials to Generation Z

Abstract

Abstract As the global importance of English and its proportion of non-native speakers have continued to grow, research on Global Englishes has prioritized non-native speakers’ changing attitudes toward non-native varieties. To investigate changes in attitudes among ‘Inner Circle’ English speakers, we conceptually replicated Lindemann’s (2005) survey of Millennial US undergraduates’ attitudes toward global English varieties with a sample of Generation Z undergraduates (n = 216). This study also sought to bridge research on attitudes toward English varieties with research on judgments of English speech by including a speech rating task featuring six speakers of different global English varieties. In comparison with Lindemann’s Millennials, Generation Z had less favorable attitudes toward their own US English and generally more positive orientations to non-native Englishes. Nonetheless, Generation Z had similar conceptions of where English is spoken well and with pleasant accents, and where English is spoken poorly and unpleasantly. Participants’ attitudes toward global English varieties were positively and modestly associated with the ratings provided to individual speakers of the same variety.