Teachers’ attitudes towards varieties of Hong Kong English

Abstract

Previous language attitude research in Hong Kong compared Hong Kong English (HKE) to exonormative standard Englishes, whereas this study uses five varieties of HKE with more or less localised features. One hundred English language teachers were listener judges in a verbal-guise experiment, and the results showed that most of the speakers received positive evaluations, particularly on solidarity dimensions. The speaker with most local features received the most negative evaluation, but the difference was most evident on status dimensions. Thus, speakers of HKE are seen as likeable, competent and proficient, which suggests that Hong Kong may have entered into the nativisation stage of Kachru’s (1983) model. We argue that the recognition of HKE demonstrated in this study should have implications for English language teaching. We propose adopting pedagogies grounded in local language and culture, which would encourage students and teachers to express themselves in localised English, and express a local identity.