Native English Research Paper

English has grown to be a language that dominates the globe. For many native speaking communities English can bring constructive and effortless communication, accompanied by its boundless power. However, commonly throughout western societies negative attitudes and stereotypes such as being boring and less educated or credible can be aimed at non-native English speakers. This is generally because they do not have the skills or ability to adequately and effortlessly communicate non-standard languages, different than their native speech. The following text aims to address this issue of prejudice between native and non-native English speakers and the effect it can have on an individual's social power and feeling of self-worth in the community. In order to gain a deeper understanding of native attitudes towards non native speakers in western societies it is important to study contrasting societies outlook on similar issues, due to the increasing connections with different societies or cultural groups through language around the world.

Language has a large part in the prejudice faced by a non-native speaking individual. As stated in Collins&Clements (2012) article prejudice is “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group as a whole, or towards and individual because he is a member of the group” (Allport, 1954, p.9) (p.377). Tans mother is victimized through prejudice due to her broken English, “My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment ... She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital did not apologize when they said they had lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing...” (Tan, 199...

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...be thought that the positive attitudes towards foreigners in Japan are only conveyed during face-to-face interactions, but negative attitudes may be nothing but a natural reaction seen in any society.

It is clear that if English is not a native language for an individual it can be difficult to escape the natural reaction of negative attitudes toward foreign accents. Along with these attitudes comes prejudice and stereotypes that can lead to an individual filled with self-doubt, as they believe they have little social power within the community. This is due to their lack of ability to adequately adopt the skills to effectively and effortlessly converse in English. It has also become apparent that the lack of credibility towards foreign accents, without a visual aspect, is not only seen in English, but throughout various languages around the world such as Japanese.