Brazilian Accents of English: an international attitude study

Abstract

We live days in which the English language is being used by peoples from many parts of the globe, 80% of them are non-native (Crystal 2006) and use the language to a diversity of intercultural encounters (Seidlhofer 2011). This reality has demanded a decentralization of the symbolic ownership of the English language. We, researchers on English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), believe that taking the native Standards as the only target reveals a restrictive and outdated approach when it comes to our students’ needs. It is in this context that studies are being developed aiming to build up to the recognition of the legitimacy of non-hegemonic Englishes. As the accent is considered the first and most powerful aspect of language to provoke reactions to language variations (Jenkins 2007), this research is going to investigate the attitude of 18 foreign speakers of English towards 2 samples of a local Brazilian accent of English. The relevance of this study is in the reflections prompted by the data for the linguistic authorship of the Brazilian speakers of English. This conceptual effort is congruous with the issues addressed by a revolutionary critical pedagogy, decentralized of its whiteness, self-reflective and sensitive to the needs of others (Scheyerl 2012).