WS

WS 2018
PS – Linguistics: Phonetics and Phonology 2018

LV – Nummer: 122052

LV – Leitung: Mag. Veronika Thir

Austrian L2 learners’
attitudes towards RP
and GA
An attitude study on the use of RP in
Disney’s “The Lion King”
PATRICK FUCHS
Inhalt
Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 2
Literature review ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Research design....................................................................................................................................... 7
Participants.......................................................................................................................................... 7
Methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Results ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
Discussion of results .............................................................................................................................. 11
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 12
References ............................................................................................................................................. 13
Appendix................................................................................................................................................ 15

1
Introduction
An issue that is still pervasive up to the present day is the misrepresentation of our
multifaceted society in commercial media such as movies and TV-shows. Especially with
regards to children’s movies, the addressing of this problem is of utmost importance as the
overrepresentation of male Caucasian heroes and lead roles, lack of female characters and
use of foreigners to Americans as villains can lead to the formation of prejudice in the audience
and a worldview that is shaped by stereotypes and prejudice (Dobrow, Gidney 1998: 106). In
today’s globalised world, and even before an exchange between different cultures occurred
to this extent, people tried to facilitate the processing of new impressions by categorising the
foreign and unfamiliar according to its most striking features, forming stereotypes based on
traits that bore the least resemblance to what they were used to (Bordalo, Coffman, Gennaioli,
Shleifer 2016: 1755). This also extended to different accents being assigned certain character-
traits and qualities, which has a major impact on the lives of people misrepresented by the
media, influencing their professional and private lives by being targets of prejudices
concerning their age, gender and ethnicity, which heavily exaggerate the differences between
the minorities and the dominant culture (Bordalo, Coffman, Gennaioli, Shleifer 2016: 1757).
However, stereotypes not only being present within social discourse and interpersonal
exchange but also reproduced and perpetuated through movies, TV-shows and other media,
orientating themselves on the norms established by the most dominant branch of society
(Tavin, David 2003: 22), lead to a divide that puts emphasis on differences instead of
similarities, thus, alienating ethnic groups and social classes from one another.

In the United States of America’s multi-ethnic society assumptions based on one’s country of
origin are present in everyday life. In the public eye, these presuppositions are apparent in
striking ways as celebrities are often used as representatives for an ethnic community.
Oftentimes, theses public personae are openly addressing the issue of binary thinking and
relying on a simplified portrayal of different ethnicities within society. An example can be
found in Tiger Woods, who coined the term “Cablinasian” to describe his heritage, as he had
ancestors of Caucasian, African, Asian and native American heritage (Oliver 2016: 37).
However, the impact and reach of such statements was far smaller than that of
commercialised mass-media, such as movies by the Walt Disney Company, which “has been a
powerful tool in shaping public perceptions of individuals and specific groups” (Degruy Leary
2005: 149).
2
One aspect of perpetuating stereotyping of any kind is its implication in animated children’s
movies, in this case namely “The Lion King” (1994) by the Walt Disney Studios. Young
audiences are especially susceptible to adopting stereotypes presented in movies and other
media, using them as a model for future interactions as they do not possess sufficient
sociocultural knowledge to reflect upon the portrayal of individual characters and social
groups (Artz 2004: 121). However, previous studies mainly focussed on American native
speaker of English and their attitudes to accents present in Disney’s movies. The question
whether non-native L2 learners of English make the same assumptions has not been the topic
of interest yet.

Thus, the aim of this study is to conduct a research within a sample group of Austrian L2
learners of English, which aims to elaborate on the question:

• In how far do the accents of Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American
(GA) English evoke similar associations and stereotypes in native speakers of GA
and Austrian L2 learners of English with regards to Disney’s “The Lion King” (1994),
especially the roles of heroic and evil/morally reprehensible characters?

This paper hypothesises that:

• L2 learners of English are not affected by the use of RP and GA accents to establish
proximity or distance (moral & social) in the same way native speakers of American
English are, as they have less exposure to different English accents and lack
sociocultural and sociolinguistic knowledge needed to deduct meaning.

The following paper will provide insight in this thesis by outlining major themes and findings
of the scholarly reception of accents and their use in Disney’s works. On the basis of these
findings, the parameters and format of the survey conducted are outlined before the results
are presented and discussed with regards to the research question and hypothesis stated in
the introduction.

3
Literature review
Disney’s movies have been thoroughly analysed regarding their sociocultural and
sociolinguistic implications in their character portrayal and their reception by American
audiences (Giddings 1999: 91-92). Since the research topic of this paper is the reception of GA
and RP in Disney’s “The Lion King” by Austrian L2 learners of English, the focus will lie heavily
on the different use of these accents. Thus, the topics of American native speakers’ language
attitudes towards GA and RP as well as their use in “The Lion King” and Disney movies in
general will be elaborated on. One has to be mindful however, that Disney’s movies mainly
aim to appeal to American speakers of English; namely male Caucasian, middle- to upper-class
standards that were present within the movie industry and its’ global market (Hooks 1994: 5)
in the mid-90s.

A study by Dobrow and Gidney (1998: 11) concluded, that foreign and familiar accents were
used in connection with characters’ roles and behaviour to align with common attitudes
American speakers display towards the respective accent. While the audience is familiar with
GA, assuming speakers of it to be morally and ideologically close to them, speakers with a
foreign accent are twice as likely to be used to portray villainous characters than those with a
GA accent (Sønnesyn 2011: 24). Especially in children’s movies, this dichotomy has a major
impact on peoples’ opinions and behaviour towards minority groups, as animated movies
consolidate a generalised way of thinking, by furthering concepts like “one nation […] one
language” (Soares 2017: 6), leading to stereotypes being formed based on appearance and
accent of a character.

The established norms lead American audiences to associate RP, as used by Scar in “The Lion
King”, with aristocracy and connected to that the character traits of being posh and either
noble or deceitful (Sønnesyn 2011: 35). These assumptions about attitudes Americans have
towards an RP accent being upper-class were reinforced in a thesis by Smith (2017: 39-40), in
which she collected data by means of a large-scale online survey. The results confirmed that
on average American participants rated British accents higher in terms of social attractiveness
and status (Smith 2017: 37-38). One explanation for American speakers’ associations of the
British RP with these traits might be found in the historical development of the English
language during the 19th and 20th century. After gaining their independence in 1776, parts of
the American aristocracy still orientate themselves to some extent towards the ruling-class of

4
England (Elliott 2000: 104). Thus, adopting the way they spoke and expressed themselves, as
can be seen in the example of rhoticity. As the loss of syllable coda /r/ and thus the emergence
of r-less pronunciation in British English spread in the late 18th to early 19th century, non-
rhoticity was imitated by leading figures in New England and the Southeast of the United
States and thus also applied regionally (Elliott 2000: 104). During the course of the 20th
century, a trend can be seen that regions speaking in predominantly non-rhotic accents were
gradually adding more syllable coda /r/ to their speech, resulting in an r-ful pronunciation
being regarded as the norm within the United States (Elliott 2000:104-105). Through this
development, non-rhotic accents, including British (but excluding some Scottish and Irish)
accents, grew to become regarded as belonging to the aristocratic sphere, whether it be
across the Atlantic or within the United States. The change of these standards of accented
speech in the public and political sphere were also reflected in movies as actors and actresses
consistently refrained more frequently from using an r-less pronunciation, leading to rhoticity
being established as the norm by the end of the 1970s (Elliott 2000: 107-113). This example
tries to showcase how attitudes towards RP were influenced by political and social
circumstances and affiliations.

While audiences are most likely not able to distinguish between different varieties of RP, the
directors chose to opt for Scar to speak a variety of it, which was common among older
speakers of upper-class status and those who use them as role-models (Hughes, Turdgrill
2004: 44). This variety may be named “conservative RP”, as Gimson does in his often revised
and updated work on different accents and varieties of English (1989: 84-85), in which he
opposes this variety with “general RP” and “advanced RP” that respectively label a neutral and
more modern approach. This “conservative RP” differs in the pronunciation of certain words,
including “happy”, where it uses an /ɪ/ rather than the usual /i/, and “bed”, in which
contemporary RP speakers would use /ɛ/ instead of the conservative /e/ (Wells 1970: 245-
246). This decision aimed to further consolidate Scar’s royal status, as it is one of the varieties
of RP with the highest prestige. While audiences might not be aware of the historic or linguistic
implications, they are likely to recognise the accent as being exaggeratedly posh and elitist as
it resembles the RP spoken by high officials and British royalty.

Contrastively, it can be stated that the heroes and virtuous characters within a Disney movie
are most likely to speak in a variation of the GA accent, as the movies are primarily aimed to

5
appeal to its audience in the United States, making it easier for them to sympathise with and
see themselves as the protagonist of the story (Sønnesyn 2011: 79). It is important to point
out, that there are plenty of different accents and varieties present within the United States,
however, GA does encompass pronunciational features that are present in the speech of
about two thirds of American accents (Wells 1982:118). Thus, sounding familiar to the
majority of American native speakers of English.

For this study it is important to mention that Disney needs to be regarded as a corporate entity
as opposed to associating it with nostalgia and the innocence of a child, since its CEO and
leading figures try to achieve similar goals to other multibillion-dollar companies (Tavin,
Anderson 2003: 22). The influence was already apparent in the year 1999, in which more than
395 million people watched a Disney TV-show every week and about 200 million people
watched Disney movies at the cinema or at home (Giroux 1999: 19). These numbers have
presumably increased with Disney’s rise in revenue from 23 billion in 1999 to 55.1 billion in
2017 (The Walt Disney Company 1999: 10, 2017: 23). This increase shows that the Disney
company reaches out to a vast number of people and thus shows them their version of the
world, which leads to audiences adapting these portrayals into their own wold view, forming
commonly shared assumptions which include concepts of race, class and gender (Tavin,
Anderson 2003: 24). With regards to Disney influencing public opinion, it is noteworthy that it
also played a significant role in providing Cold War propaganda for the U.S. Government,
profiting from excluding communist mentalities in their portrayal of society (Kanfer 1997:
153). Critics of “The Lion King” argue that stereotyping against minorities within the U.S.A. is
present is the movie, as it anthropomorphises animals to foreground human characteristics
based on stereotyped clichés (Artz 2004: 121). One point if critique is Scar’s appearance, who
is shown to have a darker mane and fur than the rest of his family, leading the audience to
associate having a dark fur/skin with being the villain and having light skin with being the hero
(Giddings 1999: 88). Even though Scar does not display the accent of a minority group within
America, his conservative RP pronunciation does resonate with viewers’ previous knowledge
on social ranking and puts him in direct opposition to the King, Mufasa, and his son Simba with
their light fur and GA accent.

6
Research design
Participants
The sample for the study at hand consist of 30 Austrian L2 learners of English aged 15 to 65.
There were no requirements for a certain level of proficiency in English, since it is not
necessary to forming attitudes towards a speaker. Precautions were taken to withhold any
information about the topic or purpose of the study from participants, as this would impact
the results and invalidate them.

In the questionnaire provided, people are asked to name their age, highest level of education
and first language. The first two points were incorporated to investigate, whether there is a
difference in attitudes depending on the listeners life experience and level of education. The
latter was included to make sure that there are only German L1 speakers participating in the
study as the purpose of it is to assess whether negative attitudes towards accents are limited
to one social group or if they also apply to Austrian L2 learners of English who are less familiar
with the accents used than L1 speakers of English (Meyerhoff 2015: 84).

It would have been beyond the scope of this study to conduct a large-scale survey, with evenly
distributed age-groups and levels of exposure to different accents; instead, this study tries to
see if there are common attitudes among Austrian L2 learners of English that resemble those
of L1 speakers of English.

Methodology
To examine in how far Austrian L2 learners’ attitudes towards GA and RP correspond with
those American native speakers of English have, an anonymous online survey was conducted,
which consisted of three questions about the participants’ background, as mentioned above,
a declaration of consent and a speaker evaluation (Meyerhoff 2015: 84) consisting of two
voice recordings participants listen to while filling in corresponding ‘semantic differential
scales’ modelled after Zahn and Hopper’s design (see Garrett 2010: 56).

The samples for eliciting language attitudes were designed according to the “verbal guise
technique” (Cooper 1975: 5-9, Garret 2010: 63) in which participants listen to two speakers
reading out the same sentences in different accents. One sample representing the use of RP
in “The Lion King” was taken from Jeremy Irons’ dialogues as Scar, which were available as
audio recordings without any background noise or movie score online. The audio file mirroring

7
the original performance in a GA accent was recorded by a language tutor at the University of
Vienna, specialised in General American English. The recordings were chosen according to
three main criteria: They needed to be understandable and make sense outside the context
of the movie, they needed to display characteristic features of the respective accents and must
not allude to the movie in any way as participants would be influenced by any previous
knowledge about its characters and plot.

Even though the GA speaker tried to mimic the intonation pattern and stress of the original
RP recording, the validity of the samples may be diminished, due to the exaggerated
opposition of GA and RP by playing the recordings one after the other (salience question), an
overly formal style of speech (style-authenticity question) (Garrett 2010: 57-60) and the
difference in intonation as the original recording stems from a trained actor with a
professional education in drama, while the other was recorded without previous training of
this sort.

For this study, an indirect method of data collection was adopted. By using a six-point
semantic differential scale for participants to evaluate the speakers’ accents, they needed to
pass a judgment in favour or against an accent. By using an indirect approach, the risk for
various bias; including social desirability bias, acquaintance bias and the use of slanted
questions (Garrett 2010: 43-45), could be minimised. The use of an anonymous questionnaire
in combination with semantic differential scales that use the three dimensions of
“Superiority”, “Social attractiveness” and “Dynamism” as defined by Zahn and Hooper to
prompt snap judgements and “minimise opportunities for mental processing” (see Garrett
2010: 56). Within the study the three dimensions were represented by 2 pairs of adjectives
each, with “Superiority” being described by the pairs rich-poor and educated-uneducated,
“Social attractiveness” by honest-dishonest and friendly-unfriendly and “Dynamism” by
energetic-lazy and enthusiastic-hesitant.

8
Results
The data gathered in this study show that Austrian speakers display attitudes similar to those
of American L1 speakers of English towards RP, while their attitudes towards the GA accent
used in this study are more diverse and less definitive, with answers being closer to the centre
of the differential scales than the fringes. There has been no significant evidence, that the age
or level of education has an impact on how the two accents were perceived. As the overall
trend across all age-groups shows similar tendencies, these criteria had to be dropped due to
insufficient evidence.

Fig.1: Participants’ rating of the speaker with an RP accent, used by Scar in “The Lion King”.

Figure 1 visualises the Austrian L2 learners’ average attitudes towards the RP speaker on the
basis of the sample taken for this study. It is not representative of the general opinion in the
country, as a broader research would need to be conducted but shows attitudinal tendencies
similar to those of American native speakers of English.

It is striking, that the two items concerning the same dimensions were rated almost equally.
Both items concerning “Superiority” were rated rather high, with ~76.6% of participants
definitely identifying the speaker as being rich and ~66.6% as being educated (1 or 2 in a scale
from 1-6 with 1 being rich/educated and 6 being poor/uneducated). While there are some
who assessed the accent as being rather negatively connotated with regards to “Superiority”,
9
the vast majority of participants associate the RP speaker as being educated and wealthy.
Concerning “Social attractiveness” it can be noted, that listeners were more moderate in their
assessment, as there are less answers on the outer edges of the scales but still, 83.3% rated
the accent to be rather dishonest than honest and 80% thought it was more unfriendly than
friendly. Some outliers rated the accent as friendly. With regards to “Dynamism”, participants’
attitudes varied but kept close to the centre of the scale, with an average of 3.3 concerning
the pair energetic-lazy and 3.13 for enthusiastic-hesitant. These two items showed the most
variety of answers, indicating that listeners could not clearly assess the level of dynamism, due
to reasons that will be elaborated in the discussion of the results.

Fig.2: Participants’ rating of the speaker with a GA accent, mirroring the dialogues taken from Scar.

In figure 2, the results of the questionnaire about the GA accent, mimicking Jeremy Iron’s
performance as Scar, are listed. Even though a trend is visible for the items of two dimensions,
the answers are more widespread and unevenly distributed, resulting in the averages being
centred strongly around the middle of the scale. There are no clear results concerning the
speaker’s “Superiority” or “Dynamism” as both averaged in the middle of the scale, slightly
indicating a positive connotation of the GA accent for Austrian L2 learners.

One exception are the items concerning “Social attractiveness”, which were rated positively
with ~83.3% associating it as being rather honest and 80% as being friendly. This aligns with

10
Dobrow and Gindey’s findings, that American speakers of English tend to favour GA with
regards to social desirability (1999: 11). This shows that, in the sample group chosen for this
study, there are similar tendencies regarding language attitudes towards GA, however, they
tend to be more moderate than depicted in the literature reviewed for this study. These
attitudes might be due to the differences in performance but may also be related to different
factors surrounding the participants themselves.

Excluding the variable of “Social attractiveness”, an average of 63.3% opted for the two middle
options of the semantic differential scales, showing that the participants do not have definitive
attitudes towards the GA speaker’s accent used for this study.

Discussion of results
The results of the study indicate similarities in attitudes of American L1 and Austrian L2
speakers of English towards the RP accent used in “The Lion King”, while the GA accent at
hand was more ambiguous to assess. One of these similarities concerning the GA accent is
that it was generally rated as sounding more honest and friendlier (“Social attractiveness”)
than the RP speaker, showing that Austrian L2 learners too find GA to be more trustworthy
(25/30 participants) and likable (24/30 participants). One reason why this is the case may be
the more frequent exposure to American English through social media and popular culture
(Marinescu 2013: 389). Marinescu further argues that English as a L2 nowadays is commonly
learned by using “new media” and the internet to allow learners of English to immerse
themselves in the language, learning it by using the media for educational purposes and
personal pleasures alike (2013: 388-389). This increased exposure might also be the cause for
the more moderate answers concerning the other dimensions of the semantic differential
scales on GA; Since L2 learners are exposed to more media on the Internet, it is likely that they
encounter a variety of American speakers of English, as the U.S.A. plays a major role in the
popular culture and movie industry. Thus, leading to them having various associations with
the GA accent, displaying features connected to a majority of north-American accents. It is
also possible, that by associating RP with news reports from Britain, L2 learners are more likely
to think of formal circumstances when listening to an RP speaker.

The study shows that Austrian L2 learners of English assign the same character traits to RP
speakers as Americans do with regards to their social status. However, the more cautious
evaluation of the “Social attractiveness” of the RP accent may be due to the high level of
11
formality that is present in the actor’s performance, which can cause listeners to think that
the speaker is covering up his true intentions, keeping up a façade by upholding an overly
polite speech. This is also influenced by the nature of Scar’s character as he is meant to be
devious and deceiving, which is apparent in Iron’s performance. The main difference in the
attitudes towards RP compared to GA are that the GA accent cannot be categorised as easy
as RP, since it represents features that are common in a multitude of American accents while
RP is almost exclusively used in an official context, be it the news, politics or the aristocratic
sphere.

Conclusion
While the study does not encompass enough information to make a general statement about
Austrian L2 learners’ attitudes towards RP and GA in general, valuable insights about
attitudinal tendencies were gained, supported by previous studies and research that was done
on this topic. Another aspect that influenced the outcome of the study was the difference in
delivery between the professionally trained actor with a conservative RP pronunciation,
playing Scar in the original movie, comparted to the speaker providing the samples for the GA
accent, mimicking that performance. This difference was especially apparent regarding the
direct opposition of the two accents in the questionnaire, pointing to the ‘salience question’
as mentioned by Garrett (2010: 57).

Concerning the research question and hypothesis of this study, it can be stated that the use
of RP for the aristocratic villain Scar in “The Lion King” does not only resonate with American
speakers’ attitudes towards the accent but does so with Austrian L2 learners’ attitudes alike.
Concerning the attitudes towards the GA accent of L2 learners, it can be stated that the results
differed due to the lower level of sociocultural understanding of different accents compared
to native speakers of English. The hypothesis proposed in this paper was however proven
wrong, as the attitudes of Austrian L2 learners were similar to those of native speakers,
indicating a greater awareness of sociolinguistic awareness than anticipated.

Even though this study was limited in the amount of data collected, it nevertheless may serve
as a basis for future investigations on the topic of language attitudes towards RP and GA
accents of English. Further studies will need to put more focus on the level of exposure to
different accents L2 learners experience and include a greater number of participants to draw
more generalisable conclusions from.
12
Word count: 4021
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Appendix
Questionnaire:

15