Abstract
The English language has spread and is now used around the world as an international lingua franca (ELF), and has claimed legitimacy in traditional outer circle contexts through the study of World Englishes (WE), while it has also gained an unprecedented status in expanding circle regions such as in East Asia and Europe. China is a case in point, with English having gained considerable popularity over the last three decades in particular. Recognising the function of English and by conducting a case study at a university in south China, this research draws upon Chinese university students’ attitudes towards their English accents in the ELF framework. Two main research questions will be explored in this chapter: (1) What are the attitudes of Chinese university students towards their own English accents? (2) To what extent are these attitudes informed by standard language ideology? By adopting both questionnaire and interview methods as research instruments, this study also investigates students’ own perspectives on the acceptability of China English, and, further, calls for a shift in perspective on the teaching of pronunciation in English-language higher education.
Parts of this chapter are based on: Fang, F. (2016). Investigating attitudes towards English accents from an ELF framework. The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 3(1), 68–80.
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Fang, F.(. (2017). An Investigation of Attitudes Towards English Accents – A Case Study of a University in China. In: Xu, Z., He, D., Deterding, D. (eds) Researching Chinese English: the State of the Art. Multilingual Education, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53110-6_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53110-6_10
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