ATTITUDES TOWARDS ACCENTED SPEECH AMONG RADIO DEEJAYS IN MALAYSIA

This study explores the attitudes of a group of college students towards different English accents. The first objective was to study the attitudes of college students towards different accents of English on the radio. The second objective was to determine the respondents’ perceptions towards their own pronunciation. The third objective was to ascertain why certain accents are preferred over others. Questionnaires were used to elicit information from the students and obtain their responses to three samples of English accents. The samples, derived from deejays from three different radio stations provided naturally spontaneous speech. The findings revealed that the accent that was the most preferred was also the most difficult to understand. The respondents exhibited varying attitudes towards the accents used by the three deejays and it was also found that the respondents were generally happy with their respective accents.