Critical literature review of contemporary research on attitudes towards world Englishes

Abstract

Locally and globally, the position of English is uncontested, making it the most sought-after languages to be learnt today. While there is little disagreement about the need to learn English, language teaching and learning efforts are often beset by questions of which variety of English is most suitable for the classroom. This is complicated by attitudes towards varieties of English. This paper is a literature review to inform a study of attitudes towards World Englishes among Sri Lankan English teachers. It presents a critical review of existing literature that combines elements of a systematic review. Based on 50 recent studies, the paper first presents key findings in an overview of the main trends in contemporary research on attitudes towards World Englishes (AWE). It next presents a selection of findings based on a critical analysis of these studies. These findings include the proliferation of AWE studies in countries that formerly considered English a foreign language, a preference for survey methods and AWE studies in pedagogical contexts, recurring findings across studies from different parts of the world, and the researchers' engagement with the concept of attitudes. The critical analysis of the studies uncovered conceptual and methodological shortcomings that also reflect the limitations previously identified in WEs research and language attitudes research. This paper concludes with the recommendation to consider moving beyond positivist, quantitative approaches such as surveys in the study of AWEs that consider language attitudes to be fixed and measurable in order to produce generalisations. Instead, this paper advocates more inductive, qualitative approaches that focus on the individual and the subjective and consider language attitudes as unfixed, volatile, and evolving in context, which might provide new insights into the field.