Language Attitude Education as ICC Facilitation: An Explorative Class

2.1 Language attitude and Intercultural Communication Competence

Attitude is “a disposition to react favorably or unfavorably to a class of objects” (Garrett, 2010, p. 20). It is a mental construct of three components – cognitive component (beliefs and stereotypes), affective component (positive and negative feelings), and behavioral orientations (e.g., willingness to communicate). Language attitude, therefore, is a disposition consisting of the three aspects of reactions to languages or language varieties. Also, language attitudes contribute to impression and evaluation of people who speak particular languages (Bradac, 1990) and are therefore closely related to stereotypes of cultural groups.

Empirical research concerning attitudes towards World Englishes (WE) varieties in the Kachruvian Expanding Circle often had similar findings: English users in these “English as a Foreign Language (EFL)” countries held largely a conservative attitude towards English, viewing British and American “native varieties” as the standard, and downgrading other “non-native varieties” (e.g., Gao & Xu, 2015; Tang et al., 2010). For example, Gao and her research team studied the language attitudes towards WE varieties held by Chinese volunteers (university students) in four intercultural events, Beijing Olympics, Shanghai World Expo, Guangzhou Asian Games and Shenzhen Universiade (See review of Gao & Xu, 2015). Using a combination of pre- and post-event subjective reaction tests, interviews with volunteers and ethnographic observations, the team examined attitudes towards five varieties of World Englishes: British English (BE), American English (AM), African-American English (AAE), Indian English (IE), and China/Chinese English (CE). It was found that the student volunteers evaluated AE, BE and AAE more positively than they did CE and IE both before and after the events, and while the evaluation of AE, BE and AAE became more positive after the events, that of CE and IE did not change significantly. The study revealed a hard reality: open linguistic attitudes and intercultural awareness do not come naturally along with intercultural contact in the workplace, and linguistic and cultural stereotypes do not disappear naturally.

In the field of intercultural communication, attitudes, along with knowledge and behaviors, have been generally accepted as the essential components of Intercultural (Communication) Competence (ICC), that is, “the overall capacity of an individual to enact behaviors and activities that foster cooperative relationships with culturally (or ethnically) dissimilar others” (Kim, 2009, p. 54). However, while educational practices and assessment tools were developed to cultivate knowledge and skills, interventions towards attitude change, especially language attitude change were less commonly observed. This was understandable given that it was relatively easier to acquire knowledge and adjust behaviors towards established goals, compared to changing fundamental beliefs and attitudes one learned from an early age. Nevertheless, attitudinal change is the central driving force, without which modification of behavior may only have temporary and superficial effect.

The desired language attitudes may vary depending on the cultural contexts. In the U.S. or Europe where the most cited ICC models were developed, scholars in general advocated cultivating curiosity, openness and empathy (e.g., Byram, 1997). The emphasis on transcending ethnocentric perspectives and understanding others is probably because as “native” English speakers, it is more urgent for them to shoulder the mutual responsibility of communicating with their “non-native” interlocutors (Lippi-Green, 2012). In China, however, a reversed form of “in-group favoritism” (Council of Europe, 2009) is also common; that is, university students sometimes preferred other languages or varieties over their own (Zheng & Lee, 2016). Therefore, the desired attitudes in China also need to include identification with one’s native language (L1). To be specific, Gao (2015) proposed three key components of desirable language attitudes in English language teaching in China: 1) Rootedness: an identification with one’s L1. 2) Openness: open to language diversities; tolerant of and respect for multiple varieties of the same language 3) Effectiveness: inclined to solve communication problems in a creative manner, based on the principle of mutual respect.

2.2 Educational interventions

In China, although the educational objectives for the English language curriculum at the tertiary level has recently included “cultivation of ICC” (Sun, 2016), research on what ICC entails in English classrooms in China and how teachers can enact this objective in varied classes is still at its beginning stage. For many teachers, the “English language” and “culture” taught in the classroom remain unproblematized; “standard American/British English” is often used as the learning model for students (Gu, 2016). Despite the importance of attitudinal change in facilitating ICC, language attitude has not yet become an important part of ICC development in foreign language education in China (Gao, 2015).

How can education, and especially, English language education, facilitate change? Recently scholars have pointed out the importance of intercultural experiences, especially experiences through ELF, in facilitating attitudinal change (Wang & Jenkins, 2016).

Nevertheless, studies such as Gao’s team research (2015) had shown convincingly that intercultural contact alone did not lead to change automatically. University students who had intercultural contact such as volunteering in international events needed guidance to think about their experiences critically, so that the experiences become transformative.

As documented and enacted by several scholars and educators, the missing link between intercultural contact and attitudinal change is reflection (Jackson, 2011; Mezirow, 1997). They believed that certain experiences (e.g., intercultural contact) may lead to a “disorienting dilemma” that prompts people to question their usual way of doing things. Through a deep level of reflection (e.g., “critical reflection,” Mezirow, 1997), people examine their deeply rooted, prescribed assumptions. When they realize the absurdity or relativity of their frame of references, they will start to change. The role teachers can play in the classroom is to facilitate critical reflection, by bringing students’ prior experience and interpretations into question and guiding them to reflect and gain new perspectives.

Guided reflection is not easy, especially reflections on language attitudes, which can elicit strong emotional reactions. As language and identity is closely related, many people can be quite stubborn and hold strongly to their opinions about languages and their speakers. Some English linguists and literacy educators in the U.S. have explored pedagogical practices in the classrooms to value people’s “linguistic rights.” For example, American sociolinguist Anne Curzan designed an introductory linguistics course to graduate students that aimed at critical reflections on the “social, political and educational implications” of standard and non-standard varieties of Englishes (Curzan, 2002, p. 343). Curzan asked students to examine texts that matter to their lives: dictionaries, grammar books, language editorials, and policy decisions. The methods proved to be effective: the class was able to “shake their more deeply held beliefs about right and wrong when it comes to language” (p. 346). Such practices, however, have not been implemented in classrooms in China.

2.3 Summary and research objective

The above review shows the following points: 1) Chinese college students largely hold a conservative language attitude towards varieties of World Englishes, and this is associated with cultural stereotypes. This indicates a difficult starting point for the development of Intercultural Communication Competence. 2) It is necessary and feasible to exercise educational interventions on language attitudes, but such pedagogical efforts have rarely been documented in China.

As action research (Chen, 2000) targets solving problems in practice, the present study aimed to document college students’ attitudes (stereotypes) towards varieties of World Englishes, explore means of pedagogical intervention, and examine the outcome of such an intervention. Following the tradition of action research, the study included a cycle of planning, acting, observing and reflecting (Burns, 2011).

5.1 Elicitation: clear and striking prejudices

The elicitation step generated heated responses. Students were highly engaged in the discussion and were not shy in asserting blunt opinions about different languages/language varieties. Their attitudes elicited were in general consistent with the ones found in Gao’s team research on student volunteers (see Gao & Xu, 2015 for a review). For example, in responding to the question “What English(es) from the video do you like and why?” some students answered British English because it was “elegant and sexy” and reminded them of Harry Potter, and Chinese English because “it is easy to understand.” One student brought up “African English” because he thought “it has a strong rhythm” like in rap music; other students did not seem to support this opinion and reacted by laughing (class transcription, Nov. 10, 2015). Other than English, some students also showed attitudes towards French (“sexy because it has many ‘[3]’ sounds”), German (“flat”), Italian (“beautiful” because “the opera is good” and it has many alveolar trills “大舌音”), and Shanghainese (“gentle, soft and tender”).

When asked about Indian and Japanese English, the students responded with immediate laughs and giggling but didn’t explain why. When the teacher pushed them further to say what they thought about Japanese and Indian English, a student spoke up and used a pejorative word “deficiency” to describe the pronunciation difference in Indian English.

T: So what’s the difference between Japanese English and Indian English?

S: Indian English is in an Indian way, and Japanese is …

T: So what’s that like?

S: Like, they have some pronunciation deficiencies… Like, “today,” they can’t say “Today.” They always say “DOday.”

T: So what about Japanese?

S: There are other deficiencies. If a sound doesn’t exist in Japanese, then Japanese may have difficulty to pronounce it… And the same thing applies for everyone… of any non-English background.

(Class transcription, Nov. 10, 2015)

The word “deficiency” and the description provided by the student suggested that at the beginning of the class, many students were still subscribed to the “native-like, standard English” model, where deviations from the “standards” were seen as “deficiencies” and were something to laugh about. They seemed to be unaware of the problematic attitudes they held towards language varieties, and were not afraid of expressing their opinions.

The verbal guise test elicited similar yet more revealing results, showing the deep-rooted prejudice behind the “deficiency” view. Students were quick to identify most of the English varieties and to assign various imagined attributes to these varieties: for example, when asked to guess the speakers’ occupation, some thought the AE speaker was a “boss”, the BE speaker was a “scientist”, the CE speaker was a “student”, the AAE speaker was a “drug dealer” and the IE speaker a “maid” or a “housewife” (Class transcription, Nov. 10, 2015).

5.2 Deconstruction: A difficult process

When the teacher showed the class who the speakers were, the students were greatly surprised: the class became quite noisy, filled with laughing, “ahas” and chit-chat. However, when the teacher asked them what was surprising, the only response was that the sounds were “not typical” of this variety. One student said, “The last one doesn’t sound like a typical Indian English. Indian English … maybe sounds more weird than this one” (Class transcription, Nov. 10, 2015). Unsolicited in-depth reflection was not heard after that.

After revealing the student identity of all the speakers in the verbal guise test, the teacher had to devote the second hour entirely to helping students reflect on their attitudes, first in small groups, then in class together. The teacher showed the class further evidence from sociolinguistic studies in history using the verbal guise test, and explained how attitudes were subjective (e.g., Lambert et al., 1960). Only one student interrupted and expressed a different opinion from the research findings, but then the class fell into silence again. The question “Where do our attitudes come from?” was also met with silence. So the teacher asked the students to discuss in groups, and it was after that some students were able to bring about several sources of attitudes: real contact with people who speak that dialect, media influence such as the Chinese Spring Festival Gala, the economic or political status of the countries and family influence.

After the teacher summarized the sources of attitudes the students identified and showed a few cartoon clips where accents were manipulated to construct characters, the class came to a close. Although we imagined the verbal guise test would reveal the subjectivity of attitudes to the students, it was in fact not self-evident. The lack of extended, in-depth reflections in the second hour could be interpreted in different ways: that the students did not realize their judgments were subjective, or they already realized that their attitudes were absurd but were ashamed to admit it.

5.3 Reconstruction: Varied degrees of attitude change

Although it was not yet clear what the effect of this class was in changing students’ attitudes in the classroom, the students’ response papers after the class revealed their varied degrees of attitude reconstruction. Altogether 28 reflection papers were collected from the 29 students the week after the class; two were off the topic and thus excluded from the analyses. Almost all of these papers have demonstrated reflection, but to different degrees. To be specific, four papers (15.4%) seemed to maintain conservative attitudes without problematizing them; 11 papers (42.3%) showed that the students started to question their old attitudes; 11 papers (42.3%) showed open, and sometimes changed attitudes towards language varieties.

Based on attitudinal changes shown in the papers, the outcomes of the reconstruction were classified into three categories: 1) the conservative, least changed language attitudes; 2) the old conservative attitudes being problematized; 3) the most open, tolerant, and/or changed attitudes.

5.4 Creative solutions to communication problems: different reactions

Although most of the students’ assignments revealed open and changed language attitudes in general, in Step Four, when they had to deal with imaged conflict situations related to language variations, students responded to these scenarios very differently. For Scenario One, visiting the family of boyfriend/girlfriend with an unintelligible dialect, students who acted out the scene were often extremely patient and empathetic: they spent great efforts in creatively mixing English, Mandarin and Chinese dialects in order to help their “boyfriend”/ “girlfriend” communicate with their “family members.” Both sides (family and the boyfriend/girlfriend) also showed willingness to learn each other’s dialect and communication styles.

However, such empathy, patience and creativity were not seen for Scenario Two, working as a Winter Olympics volunteer to serve an international VIP but not being able to understand his or her English. Students did not seem to have strategies to deal with the conflict on their own; some would quit the volunteering job, some suggested having another person who speaks the same native language as the VIP to serve him, and some resorted to their supervisor for help. One group even suggested that they would “yell back at the VIP and tell him this is China and this is Chinese English, he has to learn to adapt.” One boy said emotionally that “This is our land. If you don’t speak good English you should go back to your country.”

Reactions to Scenario Three, oral interpretation difficulties in an academic setting due to accent unfamiliarity, revealed interesting contradictions between what the students thought they should do and what they actually did in real life. One group performed a conversation between a Japanese professor and a Chinese student. The “Japanese professor” first spoke in English, then switched to Japanese, and finally to Chinese, but failed to be understood by the student in all three attempts. So finally the Chinese student said “I am sorry. You are from Japan so your English has a Japanese accent. I can’t understand you. Can you speak slower?” After that they were able to communicate successfully.

Surprisingly, the student who acted out the “Chinese student” shared an anecdote of himself in which he behaved completely differently: once he interpreted for a Czech professor when showing him around Beijing, and found the professor’s “heavy accent” very difficult to understand. Instead of telling him directly he could not understand and asking him to “speak slower”, he just pretended he understood most of the time. When the instructor asked him “Why is it that when you acted out the situation, you directly pointed out you could not understand the Japanese professor; but in the situation with the Czech professor, you pretended you understood?” He replied, “Because this was not real”, indicating real encounters with professors were such high-stake situations that they would pretend everything was fine. When the instructor asked the whole class “What if this were you, what would you do?” many students agreed that they would also choose to pretend because this was an international expert in their field, implying that they did not want to be disrespectful by asking the expert to accommodate himself to the student. Nevertheless, this student understood that the professor could understand him well because professors often had students from all over the world and could adjust themselves to different accents.

Students’ solutions to the scenarios had revealed that multiple factors were at play when solving problems related to language attitudes. Students’ willingness to show understanding and creativity was dependent on the relationship with the interlocutor and the identity that stood out in the contexts. For example, Scenario Two often made students’ Chinese national identity salient and they viewed conflict as a threat to their national pride. Therefore, they often revealed an ethnocentric (US-versus-THEM) mentality in the situation. Scenario Three showed that when the interlocutor was part of the professional community students imagined themselves to join, they suppressed their true emotions and struggles and tried every way to avoid conflict, in order to make the communication look smooth.