Major Project I

FINAL YEAR PROJECT
THE PERCEPTION OF MALAYSIAN ENGLISH

ACCENTS (ME) AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS
AMONG ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS
By:
S. Satvin Raj
FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES

TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN UNIVERSITY OF
MANAGEMENT & TECHNOLOGY
ACADEMIC YEAR
2022/23
Final Year Project. The Perception of Malaysian English Accent
(ME) and its Characteristics among English Major Students
By
S. Satvin Raj
Supervisor: Ms. Sridevi A/P Balakrishnan

Co-supervisor: Mohd Safarizan bin Mohd Safian
A project report respectfully submitted to the
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities in fulfilment
of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts, English with Education (Honors)
Department of English Language Studies

Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology
Kuala Lumpur
2022/23
Copyright by Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &

Technology.
All rights reserved. No part of this project documentation may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology.
DECLARATION
The project submitted herewith is a result of my efforts in totality and in every aspect of the
project works. All information that has been obtained from other sources had been fully
acknowledged. I understand that any plagiarism, cheating, collusion, or of any sort constitutes
a breach of University rules and regulations and would be subjected to disciplinary actions.
Satvin Raj
_______________________________
S. SATVIN RAJ
Bachelor of Arts English with Education (Honours) in English Studies (2022/2023)
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ABSTRACT
To fulfil the requirements of Bachelor of Arts (Honours) English with Education,
students are required to conduct a Final Year Project before graduating. The main purpose of
developing the Final Year Project on the analysis of Malaysian English Accents (ME) and its
Perceptions among Malaysian College Students, is to comprehend the factors that influence
Malaysian College Students from Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology, in their attempts to learn to adopt the Malaysian English Accenst (ME) whilst
pursuing their Majors in English Studies. This will be a qualitative project conducted
individually which shall include a total of 6 Chapters. However, only the first 3 Chapters will
be presented to the respective Supervisors which are Chapter 1: Introduction, Chapter 2:
Literature Review, and Chapter 3: Methodology. On the other hand, the last 3 Chapters will
be presented in the upcoming semesters which are Chapter 4: Results, Chapter 5: Discussion,
and Chapter 6: Conclusion. This code of modules will be frequently assessed by the
respective Supervisor and Co-Supervisors and marks shall also be respectfully awarded by
them. Throughout each phase of this chapter, only qualitative aspects have been respectfully
applied as it was deemed worthy to asses the perceptions and factors that would influence
Malaysian College Students from Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology, which statistical figures such as Microsoft Excel and SPSS may largely lack.
Therefore, the qualitative pilot testing on the Interview method was annexed as the chief
research methodology accompanied by the renowned conceptual frameworks of Language
Acquisition Device Theory by Professor Noam Chomsky and Human Behaviourism
Modelling Theory by Professor Albert Bandura.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With the warmest and kindest regards, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to
everyone who has willingly provided immense help and morale assistance, and team co-
operation to me. Without this benevolence, I was unable to complete my final year project
smoothly. Firstly, I am grateful to our Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities (FSSH) for offering Project I and
Project II which significantly provided me with an immense opportunity for students to
engage in new precepts of learning and exploring their skills after acquiring essential
linguistic knowledge from lectures.
A special thanks to my supervisor, Ms. Sridevi A/P Balakrishnan, and my co-

supervisor, Mohd Safarizan bin Mohd Safian for their excellent supervision and for
sacrificing the valuable time they took from their busy schedule, to guide, encourage, and
advising me during the entire progress of both Project I and Project II. Thanks to both of their
immense kindness, in taking care of both of my progress and providing academic assistance
and advice when necessary. Therefore, it was an enthralling experience to apply all the
knowledge of the academic outputs. In this manner, I tremendously gained knowledge
regarding my studies in this final year project. Furthermore, my deepest regards also go to my
classmates in TARUC who provided me with both morale support and intellectual insights.
Nonetheless, my deepest appreciation goes to my beloved parents for providing me

with vast opportunities to further my studies until this stage of higher-tertiary education. Last
but not the least, a million thanks to all the parties and delegation teams who have either
directly or indirectly assisted and supported me in completing my final year project and
studies.
Thank you, everyone.

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LIST OF KEY TERMS

Accent = According to Sukman (2018), accent is a noun which describes an effort made by
human’s speech organs to pronounce or stress word syllables in a distinct way which may be
unique to a particular community.
Linguistic Repertoire = As mentioned by Sabino (2017), the ability of a speaker to

participate in various social settings where the language of a particular environment may
differ from one another. The higher repertoire a individual possesses, the more successful he
or she shall be when expressing themselves to speakers of different languages.
Stereotypes = Professor of Psychological Science, Harrits (2018), defines this as a mental

picture of social stigma (expected behaviour) painted on individuals of a particular group in
the society which represents an exaggerated opinion, prejudice or irrational judgement made
towards a particular person.
Mother tongue = Interestingly, Saphari et al (2017) describes this as a root language of an

individual’s race, tribe, clan or ethnicity which they first spoke and wrote with. In simpler
words, it indicates the native language that a person has grown up speaking since his or her
childhood.
Phonology = In the field of linguistics, Mai (2020), expresses phonology and phonetics as
the science of verbal speech sounds, their characteristics and functions of the human speech
organs when attempting to speak in a particular language. Different languages have their own
set of speech sounds. Hence, one language’s speech sound system may or may not exist in
another language.
Vowel = According to Whalen et al (2018), this dictates a particular set of speech sounds in
the study of phonetics and phonology. It describes the articulation of the oral segment of the
human windpipe where the airflow is not restricted deeply to cause major audible frictions.
Manglish = A Malaysian Writer Kim (2019), attempts to describe this as a native-based

hybrid mixture of Malaysian vocabularies consisting from the races of Malays, Chinese,
Indians, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hokkien phrases respectively merged into creole words with
the native speaker’s official English. Manglish is spoken throughout Malaysia within
colloquial settings.
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Multilingual = According to Kim (2021), multilingual can be defined as, an individual who
can speak and write in 2 or more languages. However, it is also possible for an individual to
speak and write in 3 languages (trilingual), 4 languages (quadrilingual), fluently, depending
on their societal settings.
Multicultural = As mentioned by Jaladin (2017), it is described as the state of a society that

witnesses 2 or more races residing in harmony, in unison together. Though the races and
ethnicities differ from language, cultural traditions, norms and taboos, the society
incorporates beliefs and ideas of individuals hailing from various range of ethnicities in their
daily lives.
Psychology = As mentioned by Churchill (2018), it refers to the scientific study of the human
mind and behaviour accompanied by both conscious and subconscious thoughts, that also
includes feelings and emotions. Though it mainly focuses on human neural relays,
psychology can also involve feelings of relationships, gender, perception, cognition,
intelligence and personality in human lives.
Gender = As described by Counihan (2021) it refers to both the physical and mental
characteristics of men and women that are socially constructed. This also includes norms,
behaviours, and roles associated with being a man or a woman, girl or boy, as well as
relationships within each other.
Pulmonic Egressive = As illustrated by Kirkham & Nance (2022) the speech sounds, by
which the air stream is created by pushing the air out through the mouth and the nose.
Vulgar = According to Wilson (2019) it correlates to the rude behaviour or coarse form of
communication but not only limited to speech. It may also refer to lewd or indecent physical
state as being physically dressed vulgar.
Commonwealth = As described by Mehrotra (2021) a country or a nation that has been both
colonised and granted Independence by the British Empire with an appropriate Democratic
System to Govern the Nation.
Situational-Comedy = As mentioned by Dixon (2019) it represents a genre of show centred

around a fixed range of characters to convey dialogues in an amusing way which carries from
episode-to-episode. The effect of humour may be notified via the usage of a pre-recorded
laugh track.
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Peer influence = As highlighted by Andrews et al (2020) it depicts the desire to do

something that an individual wouldn’t do otherwise but just for the sake of being accepted or
valued by a particular friendship circle.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE NUMBER

Declaration……………………………………………………………… i
Abstract…………………………………………………………………. ii
Acknowledgement……………………………………………………… iii
List of Key Terms………………………………………………………. iv
List of Figures………………………………………………………….. v
Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………. 1
1.2 Theoretical Background of the Study……………………………………………… 1-3
1.3 Problem Statement…………………………………………………………………. 3-6
1.4 Significance of the Study…………………………………………………………… 6-8
1.5 Research Objectives………………………………………………………………… 8
1.6 Research Questions…………………………………………………………………. 8
1.8 Limitations of the Study…………………………………………………………….. 9-12
1.9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………... 12
Chapter 2: Literature Review……………………………………………. 13
2.1 Definition of the Key Word Accents………………………………………………….. 13-14

2.2 Reviews of Literature…………………………………………………………………. 14
2.2.1 Great Britain English Accent Studies………………………………………………. 14-15
2.2.2 Australian English Academic Communications……………………………………. 15-16
2.2.3 Indian English Accent Studies……………………………………………………… 16-18
2.2.4 Elements of Speech in Thailand English Vocabularies……………………………. 18-19
2.2.5 Malaysian English Vocabularies…………………………………………………... 19
2.2.6 Malaysian English Diglossia Studies……………………………………………… 20
2.2.7 Sub-varieties of Malaysian English……………………………………………….. 20-21
2.3. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….. 21
Chapter 3: Methodology of Research…………………………………. 22
3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………. 22
3.2 Research Approach………………………………………………………………… 22
3.3. Purpose of Research………………………………………………………………. 23
3.4 Research Design…………………………………………………………………… 23
3.5 Target Population………………………………………………………………….. 23
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3.6 Description of Sample Size……………………………………………………….. 23

3.7 Data Collection Technique………………………………………………………... 24
3.8 Description of Sampling Technique………………………………………………. 24
3.9 Qualitative Techniques……………………………………………………………. 25-26
3.10 Description of Conceptual Frameworks………………………………………………… 26-31
3.11 Description of Project Timeline…………………………………………………………. 32
3.12 Summary………………………………………………………………………………… 33
3.13 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………… 33
Chapter 4: Research Results & Discussion ………………………………….

4.0 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….. 34
4.1 Accent Identification………………………………………………………………………… 34
4.2 Attributes of Malaysian English Accent (ME)……………………………………………… 35
4.3 Justification of Accent Comparison…………………………………………………………. 35
4.4 Validity & Reliability………………………………………………………………………... 35-36
4.5 Study Findings………………………………………………………………………………... 36
British Accent Pronunciation………………………………………………………………… 36-40
Characteristics of Malaysian English Accent (ME)………………………………………….. 40-41
American Accent Pronunciation……………………………………………………………… 42-46
Characteristics of Malaysian English Accent (ME)…………………………………………... 47-48
4.6 Summary……………………………………………………………………………………… 48-49
4.7 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………. 49
4.8 Results of Semi-Structured Interview………………………………………………………… 50
4.9 Validity & Reliability…………………………………………………………………………. 51
4.9.1 Thematic Dialogue Analysis I: British & American English Accents……………………… 52
4.9.2 Interview Questions Raised…………………………………………………………………. 52
4.9.3 Discussion………………………………………………………………………………….. 52
4.9.4 Thematic Dialogue Analysis II: Chinese English Accents………………………………… 53
4.9.5 Interview Questions Raised………………………………………………………………... 53
4.9.6 Discussion…………………………………………………………………………………... 54
4.9.7 Thematic Dialogue Analysis III: Chinglish-Manglish English Accents……………………. 55
4.9.8 Interview Questions Raised……………………………………………………………………… 56
4.9.9 Discussion……………………………………………………………………………………….. 57
4.9.10 Thematic Dialogue Analysis IV: Local & Foreign Exposure…………………………………. 58
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4.9.11 Interview Questions Raised………………………………………………………………………. 58

4.9.12 Discussion………………………………………………………………………………………… 58-59
4.12 Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………… 59
4.13 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………. 60
4.14 Analysis of Thematic Reponses…………………………………………………………………… 61
4.15 Validity & Reliability……………………………………………………………………………… 62
4.15.1 Theme I Nature of LAD Characteristics by Professor Noam Chomsky……………………… 63-65
4.15.2 Theme II: Influences of Mass Media Exposure by Late Professor Albert Bandura………….. 66-68
4.15.3 Theme III: Perceptions of Stereotypes by Late Professor Albert Bandura……………………. 69-70
4.15.4 Theme IV: Intolerance Towards New Influences by Late Professor Albert Bandura………… 70-71
4.16 Outcome of the Discussion…………………………………………………………………………. 71
4.17 Minor Ratio of Gender……………………………………………………………………………… 72
4.18 Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………. 72
4.19 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………… 72
Chapter 5: Conclusion
5.1 Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 73-74
5.2 Achievements……………………………………………………………………………………….. 75-77
5.3 Contributions to the Academic Scope………………………………………………………………. 78-79
5.4 Directions for Future Research……………………………………………………………………… 80
5.5 Issues and Solutions………………………………………………………………………………… 80-
81
Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………………… -
References………………………………………………………………………………………………. -
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LIST OF TABLES & DIAGRAMS
Table1.1 Sub-Varieties of Malaysian English-Chapter 1
Table 1.2 Evidence of Pronunciation Phonological Variation Based on British IPA-Chapter

4
Table 1.3 Evidence of American Phonological Variation Based on British IPA-Chapter 4
Diagram 1 Noam Chomsky’s LAD Theory -Chapter 3
Diagram 2 Albert Bandura’s Human Modelling Theory- Chapter 3
Diagram 3: Practical Annexation of PLAB and PhoTransEdit Software- Chapter 3
Diagram 4 Description of Project Timeline- Chapter 3
Diagram 5: Participant’s Response-Chapter 4
Diagram 6: Analysis of Linguo-Psychological Thematic Response-Chapter 4
Diagram 7: Professor Noam Chomsky’s Theory-Chapter 4
Diagram 8: Late Professor’s Albert Bandura’s Theory I -Chapter 4
Diagram 9: Late Professor’s Albert Bandura’s Theory II-Chapter 4
Diagram 10: Pie Chart Based on Gender Demographics- Chapter 4

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 INTRODUCTION
This first section of the study will be dedicated to introducing the title of the research
which is, “The Perceptions of Standard English Accents (SE) and its Characteristics Among
English Major Students. The chapters that will be discussed in this entire research paper are
Introduction, Literature Review, Research Methodology, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion
accompanied by References. However, the empirical output, of this particular Chapter 1 shall
include a total of eight chapters which are, namely, Introduction, Theoretical Background of
the Study, Problem Statement, Research Objectives, Research Questions, Significance of the
Study, Limitations of the Study, Instrument of the Study and Conclusion. Henceforward, the
organization of the sub-division of each chapter and sub-chapters tactfully fulfills the purpose
of drawing out the essential importance of the content validity of this research being executed
via a qualitative manner.
1.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The English language has successfully spread across the globe and it is currently
spoken as the official International Lingua Franca (ILF). In this scenario, English is not only
used as a medium of communication in countries of the inner circles but it is also taught as
both a second and foreign language within countries of the outer and expanding circles,
(Mufwene, 2019). While the English language is spoken with a diverse range of accents
accompanied by an unrivaled status of legitimacy across the globe, speakers in Southeast
Asian countries such as Malaysia witnessed an exceptional case where the English language
has always been uttered, with a diverse set of Malaysian English Accents (ME). The local
Malaysian accents were profoundly used even during the introduction of proficiency tests
such as MUET (Malaysian University English Test) in 1999, which were conducted in all
Malaysian government and privately based pre-university programs, (Harun et al, 2021). As
specifically mentioned by Pilus et al (2019), although Malaysians were significantly exposed
to the inner-circles of native-English speakers, the study results indicated patterns resembling
Malaysian ESL learners, favoring to use the of Malaysian English Accents (ME) even during
proficiency speaking tests. Apart from that, Kim (2019) mentioned in her writings that,
Malaysians also incorporate the elements and pronunciations of Manglish which can be
described as a distinct variety of the English language that is a combination of Malay,
Chinese and Indian words registered in speech which is embraced colloquially in relaxed
informal settings. Interestingly, Che et al (2020), have mentioned that diglossia is also a
linguistic feature found in Standardized
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English (SE) which is deeply influenced by the Mother tongues of respective speakers i.e
Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. Besides that, Asian linguists Ng & Diskin-Holdaway (2021)
have mentioned that Malaysian speakers also incorporate a diverse range of social dialects
(ethnolects) in their daily communication. Henceforth, this study is strongly focused on
exploring three main research questions. Firstly, what are the different types of English word
pronunciations and their characteristics among Malaysian University College students?
Secondly, what are the perceptions and factors of Malaysian University College students in
learning to adapt to the local standard English (SE)? Thirdly, what are the influences of local
standard English (SE) accents, in shaping the influence of Malaysian University College
students aged between 18-21 at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology? Therefore, this research paper shall be conducted on the qualitative method by
adopting the semi-structured interview sessions with 10 respondents, from the program of
English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology.
Henceforth, it seeks to investigate the perception and influences of localized (ME) Malaysian
English Accents, creole-hybrids, and elements of Manglish among candidates from their
perspective on using this localized English word pronunciation during their daily
communication in everyday life.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2022), an accent can be described as a

distinctive effort of articulating or pronouncing certainly written orthographies and adjacent
syllables of words, with a certain stress in the English language. In this scenario, both native
and non-native speakers of the English language speak with a diverse variety of accents and
Malaysian speakers are no exception. In his writings, Sivalingam (2020), described that the
English accent uttered by Malaysian University students is dominantly influenced by both the
monolingual or bilingual linguistic knowledge of the speaker. Apart from that, the ability of
Malaysian speakers to articulate a certain word is uttered differently based on both the
cognitive and psychomotor speech organ memory of an individual. Nevertheless, the
perceptions and factors of preferred accents among Malaysian University students on
learning to adapt to the Malaysian English Accent (ME) remain an uncharted topic by past
researchers up to this date. Furthermore, Malaysian speakers are also heavily influenced by
the linguistic features of Diglossia. As cited by Oxford Learner’s Dictionary (2022), the term
Diglossia originated from the Greek word διγλωσσία (diglossia) which is a particular type of
standardization of speech where two distinct varieties of a language are uttered
simultaneously in a society. Nevertheless, the influences of Malaysian diglossia in shaping
the influences of speech among
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Malaysian University students are still a topic that has witnessed limited exploration
in past studies. Moreover, Rusli et al (2018) have mentioned in their writings that the daily
colloquial communication among Malaysian speakers chiefly includes the elements of
Manglish that originate from various local languages in Malaysia i.e Malay, Mandarin,
Tamil, Hakka, Cantonese, and Hokkien. In this scenario, the English language will constantly
be forever in a constant change where hybrid words from other languages would be annexed
into local communal settings to display feelings of affection, mockery, scorn, or disgust in a
society. However, the perceptions and factors of Manglish being uttered by Malaysian
University students remain un unclassified topics amongst past researchers in their studies.
1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT
Linguistic Repertoires such as accents can be classified as the influence of the Mother
tongue which has an incredible effect on an individual’s ability to participate in various social
settings in both formal and informal environments. In this scenario, the higher the repertoire
of an individual, the more likely a speaker would be able to express themselves in that way in
a particular language (Van Der Worp et al, 2018). Nevertheless, studies on word
pronunciations of and the characteristics of Malaysian English Accents (ME) being uttered by
Malaysian University students in the Malaysian context remains inadequate up until this date.
Moreover, this research also seeks to examine the perceptions and factors of Malaysian
University students in learning to adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME) on a wider scope
in the English language. Furthermore, the influences of the phenomenon of Manglish and
Diglossia of local Malaysian English Accent (ME) in shaping the influence of Malaysian
University students have not been explored adequately by past researchers.
At the present moment, a tremendous effort of linguistic output has been carried out
by past researchers concerning the varieties of Malaysian English Accent (ME) conducted on
a Quantitative median scale, with the technical wizardry of mathematical software
components such as Microsoft Excel and SPSS. Nevertheless, such instrumentations only
yielded statistical outputs concerning the frequency of Malaysian Accents being employed
via speech among Malaysian College Students i.e Malay, Chinese, and Indian Accents
accompanied by several elemental dichotomies of the frequency of Manglish being used via
oral verbatim. Although past researchers have attempted to provide a quantitative statistical
output on the varieties of
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English Accents spoken by Malaysian College Students, the scope of Perceptions and
factors influencing a speaker’s way to adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME), seems to be
a highly uncharted scope, left untouched by the majority of Malaysian Linguistic Panels, on a
Nationwide scale.
The scope of English studies with past researcher’s papers has left the factors on why
Malaysian College Students, have decided to adopt, the Malaysian English Accent (ME)
despite the first language or Mother tongue influence determines they way a speaker
articulates his or her sentence in a certain way. Therefore, this topic also seeks to analyze an
unexplored linguistic theory on how the precepts of Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and
its strategies in allowing a speaker of the English language to naturally comprehend the
meaning behind the uttered speech as per the renowned linguist, Professor Noam Chomsky’s
theory. Another issue of linguistic concern is that past research journals have only attempted
to analyze the varieties of English Accents, dominantly via the use of online questionnaires
such as Google Forms being posted via WhatsApp group chats for the sake of convenience
that ultimately lacks personal contact with the participants being involved in the research.
Moreover, past citations also lack practical validity on the Perceptions of Malaysian College
Students regarding the usage and factors that influence their ways to adopt the Malaysian
English Accent (ME). In this manner, past studies, have merely quantified the outputs of the
frequencies of speech elements such as Manglish, Creole, Pidgin, and other localized words
uttered by their chosen respondents, but lack a psychological approach to how they correlate
with the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) Theory, that was developed by Professor
Noam Chomsky.
The current Panel of English Language at most University Colleges in Malaysia has
left the outputs of the psychological correlation between language and factors influencing a
speaker’s ways to adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME) to be an unmapped topic. In this
scenario, the perceptions, grammar accuracy, morphological outputs of syntax, vocal
comprehension of phonetics, accents, word pronunciations, phonology, phonemes, and
phonemic orthography can only be naturally understood by instinct that will be further
discussed with greater detail in Professor Noam Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) Theory in the later chapters. But, the particular factors of why Malaysian College
Students, especially those who hail from the program of English Studies at Tunku Abdul
Rahman University of Management & Technology choose to adopt the Standardized Accent
(SE) remains an exclusively unexplored scope even by the past researchers who graduated in
the Faculty of
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Social Science and Humanities (FSSH). In this context, the psychological theory of
behaviorism that was developed by the late Canadian Psychologist Albert Bandura will be
discussed in further depth in the later parts of Chapter 3: Research Methodology. On a
psychological domain, past studies have failed to analyze how the human mind seeks to
replicate what was observed, which phases into sessions of mental rehearsal thus leading to
physical replication of a certain speech pattern or behavioral attitude of factors caused by
fostering nurturing in the external environment. Furthermore, past journals, lack concurrent
validity on how the English language psychologically influences the human mind to speak in
a certain way that correlates back to the linguistic principles executed qualitatively is a large
grey area that is greatly left unexplored due to stereotypical bemusements concerning two
different empirical branches of language and psychology.
Research models and Data samplings of past research studies have greatly left the
correlation between the psychological precepts on language and gender in the factors on how
Malaysian College Students are being influenced to adopt their ways to pronounce words in a
particular manner. From a deeper perspective, language is also interrelated to the precepts of
the gender of each speaker depending on a given situation. In this manner, both genders be it
male or female strongly uphold, the stigma of the fear of mispronouncing words,
measurement of mastery of the English vocabulary, ability to adopt a Standardized Accent
(SE), ability to communicate fluently amongst peers, confidence levels in both prompted and
unprompted speech given in discourse analysis are key examples of numerous myriads of
topics, left unspoken by past renowned English linguist panels. Henceforward, valid research
still needs to be scientifically conducted with appropriate ethical measurements on a
qualitative scale to further draw out both linguistic and psychological relevance on how they
overall relate towards the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) theory whilst shaping the
perceptions of students are largely absent even in recent studies.
Model samplings of past research papers, heavily lack reports concerning the
psychological precepts on the perceptions of Malaysian College students in their strategies to
adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME). In this scope, the aforementioned precepts on the
types of problems or challenges faced by Malaysian College Students in learning to adapt to
the Malaysian English Accent (ME) are largely absent due to the quantitative statistical
nature of the questionnaires and data sampling models conceived in past academic papers. In
this scenario, the foster hood domestic environmental background, the academic
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knowledge taught to Malaysian College Students during the critical period is a highly
essential factor in how a speaker perceives a certain accent. In former linguistic study cases,
insights into strategies on how Malaysian College Students adopt the Malaysian English
Accent (ME), terms of word pronunciation, and the influences of tonal articulations were
largely absent due to numerical quantitative outputs carried out in former studies. To
recapitulate, this research paper seeks to discover several new unexplored topics about the
perceptions and factors that influence 10 chosen participants from the program of English
Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia based on the qualitative theoretical precepts of Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) and its relevant correlation with the Psychological Human Behaviourism Theory to
contribute a new scope that may also serve the purpose of immense of displaying colossal
academic values in the field of linguistics for future researchers.
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY
The production of this research is highly significant and includes numerous

practicalities in terms of contributing a new discovery towards the existing knowledge
umbrella linguistic terminology which are the Standardized Malaysian Accents (SE).
Furthermore, two chief theoretical frameworks that will be applied to further support the
academic validity of this research paper are the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) Theory
developed by renowned linguist Professor Noam Chomsky and also the Human
Behaviourism Theory developed by the late Canadian Psychologist, Albert Bandura. In this
manner, previous studies conducted by past researchers, have largely left an unscaled grey
area that is unexplored up until this point with being the scope regarding, the Perceptions of
Malaysian College Students, Strategies, and Influences in adopting the Malaysian English
Accent (ME) in when uttered in both formal and informal settings. Interestingly, the
contribution of this research paper shall correlate the facets of both linguistics and human
psychology in a speech to provide a better comprehension and conventional wisdom to the
minds of young scholars on how these two stark theoretical branches are inextricably linked
in this qualitative study that has not been discussed in past studies.
The lack of prior valid research being conducted in this particular scope will require
this particular study, to be divided into two-distinct stages that will be proposed in greater
detail namely being, the two-stage design. Firstly, stage one of this research paper shall seek
to annex
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an extensive survey with academic contents related to the field of English Accent Studies,
with the Malaysian English Accents (ME) being held in high importance to further narrow
down the respective field scope. Therefore, the literature review is also highly essential as it
propels the study to birth a suitable theoretical framework to successfully yield the respective
data results to be discussed in greater detail in the later parts of this study. On the other hand,
the second stage of this research paper shall exercise the execution of a semi-structured
interview session that will be conducted physically with each individual whom are 10
participants from students who are pursuing their Bachelor’s Degree in English Studies, at
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In this scenario, the semi-structured interview shall be carried out between 10-15 minutes to
test the validity of the hypotheses that would enable the methodology to yield valuable
empirical results to answer both the research objectives and research questions
simultaneously without the obstruction of having to deal with sequential problems during the
study. Therefore, the methodological outputs will not only be of reference for students who
pursue their English studies at the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities (FSSH) in
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology Kuala Lumpur, but also
throughout every undergraduate Bachelor’s Degree Courses that upholds the content of
language, gender, accent, perceptions, and precepts of psychology being taught in all Higher-
Tertiary-Institutions nationwide, throughout Malaysia.
In addition to the scientific findings of this study, the outputs of its results shall lead
to the successful outcomes of, both the perception and the factors that affect students from the
course of English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in their efforts to adopt towards the Malaysian English Accent
(ME). The primary practical contributions of this study, are as follows. Firstly, this study
shall enable young linguistic researchers from the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities,
(FSSH) firstly, to identify the different types of English word pronunciations and their
characteristics, secondly it is also useful for young linguistic learners to recognize the
perceptions and factors whilst also being exposed towards the influences of students from the
Course of English Studies in learning to adopt towards the Standardized Malaysian English
Accent (SE). Finally, the Head of Linguistics Panel at the Faculty of Social Science and
Humanities (FSSH), may use the information and data results of this study, to successfully
emulate or to use the outputs of this study as relevant items of inferences throughout all the
course offering English Studies, in terms of Accent awareness, Linguistic theory,
psychological theories related to behaviorism,
REUY3S1 Project I 7
and its appropriate context, concerning the English language itself. To encapsulate,
this research paper shall inspire more young scholars to participate in the field of English
language studies in the future time period.
1.5 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
The research objectives of this study are as follows:
1. To identify different types of English pronunciations and their characteristics

prevalent among Malaysian University College students aged between 18-21 at Tunku
Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology?
2. To recognize the perceptions and factors of Malaysian University College students in
learning to adapt to the local English (SE)
3. To explore the influences of local standard English (SE) accents in shaping the
influence of accents used by Malaysian University College students aged between 18-
21 at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology
1.6 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The research questions of this study are as follows:
1. What are the different types of English word pronunciations and their prevalent
characteristics among Malaysian University College students aged between 18-21 at
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology?
2. What are the perceptions and factors of Malaysian University College students in
learning to adapt to local English (SE)?
3. What is the relationship between the pronunciation of students and their perception of
accents of Malaysian University College students aged between 18-21 at Tunku
Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology?
REUY3S1 Project I 8
1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This section of the study is dedicated to discussing the possible limitations and flaws
present during the scientific outputs during the entire period of attempting to yield valuable
data results and discussions in the later chapters. First and foremost, the execution of the
methodology being exercised in this particular study, witnesses the cross-sectional data
sampling designs where in this experimental output, the 10 selected participants from the
Program of English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were only interviewed once. In this manner, the
researcher could only have a single chance of conducting qualitative assessments to
determine the respective variables in this study. However, a case must be strongly made,
although the execution of cross-sectional data would allow the researcher to employ the
facets of data generalization of the findings whilst discovering the perceptions and factors of
students in learning to adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME), it therefore subsequently
suppressed the execution of an enhanced close investigation that could encompass a
tremendous volume regarding the relationships between each research objectives, being
present in this study. Furthermore, the quantitative developments of a proper Likert-scale or
any other time-series scaled databases scales of networks could be a potential candidate for
possible testing involving all forms of median and numerical literacy concerning the
frequency of the students in learning to adopt the Malaysian English Accents (ME) are
hereby not recorded in the respective annals. If these elements were respectfully annexed, the
data results would possibly yield a much more insightful analysis in terms of quantitative
outputs be it in the long-term longitudinal frameworks, or aspects of probable causation in
this study.
Secondly, the respective results of this study were dominantly extracted via the use of
what is commonly addressed as the single-key informant approach, which heavily limits or
narrows down the scope of this study. Furthermore, the conduct of this particular informant
approach significantly limits the researcher in terms of information accessibility. In an
inferential data sampling scale, the responses from the participants during the execution of
the semi-structured interview session for a duration of 10-15 minutes, were merely based on
the assessments of self-reported data that includes the collective archive samplings of the
perceptions from the respective participants, as opposed to factual diagnostic values.
REUY3S1 Project I 9
Besides that, it is with great importance to emphasize that although the questions
presented during the semi-structured interview session have been linguistically fashioned to
suit the needs of students hailing from the Course of English Studies the other possible
scientific alternatives have been overlooked by the researcher due to the limited time
constraints being present during the entire production of this research paper. In a quantitative
analysis, integration of other software such as Microsoft Excel, SPSS, and Vimeo, could have
also been used to provide a better result with an enormous scale of median, frequency, and
mathematical tabulations that are largely absent during the scientific production of this study.
Thirdly, this qualitative study also heavily lacks descriptive samplings in terms of the
selection of participants to be chosen during the semi-structured interview sessions. In this
scenario, the participants were selected based on correlational sampling methods, where the
geographic and topographic regions regarding the location of the chosen participants, were
from the same academic institution course department, city, and country that from the Course
of English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology, Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia. Therefore, the participants were not selected from a diverse sampling
colony as a majority of the participants that were handpicked hailed from Chinese descent in
this study. Therefore, a strong case must be made that the results of this particular study,
could not be deemed worthy of generalization in terms of, concluding the perceptions and
factors of all Malaysian College Students, hailing from all levels of Higher-Tertiary
Educational Programmes, from all races, genders, and academic background throughout
entire Malaysia. In simple terminology, population sampling also remarkably suppresses the
overall generalization of the results to the overall population of Malaysia.
Fourthly the integration of the semi-structured interview sessions carried out for the
duration of 10-15 minutes, are chiefly only selected from participants who have experienced
a localized National Primary and Secondary School Academic background of learning the
English language, during their childhood and teenage days, especially in the critical time
period. To further highlight, the selected participants, may not be able to fully comprehend
the actual essence of perceiving accents nor they might have not been fully able to relate to
the linguistic notions of factors influencing their behaviours towards adopting to use the
Malaysian English Accent (ME). In terms of Mother tongue influence, the selected
participants may also tend to heavily lose interest, being detached or unfamiliar with specific
terminologies presented as questions, since the Mother tongue of the selected
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participants were chiefly reported to be of Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese, and Modern

Chinese, although they did receive English education during their days in both Critical and
Higher-Tertiary Educational Academic Institutions. Apart from that, since the execution of
this semi-structured interview session is only carried out live via physical as face-to-face
mode, it may spike up the unnecessary levels of anxiety and stress be it from both the
researcher and the participants during the entire interview session.
Fifthly, this research paper heavily lacks the outputs of external economy factors such
as occupational influence or the dynamics of career choice that could help in widening the
scope of the participant’s overall response in this study. In an inferential scale, external
occupational factors and career choices of the selected participants could potentially force the
behavior of the participants towards orally answering the questions, when prompted during
the semi-structured interview session. In this manner, the economical factor could also be the
potential external influence that indirectly affects the overall accuracy and reliability of this
particular study which is not able to perfectly illustrate the perceptions and factors of every
Malaysian College Student in learning to adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME)
throughout the entire Nation of Malaysia.
To summarise, planning and the execution of this research includes several

shortcomings, due to the qualitative nature that was respectfully addressed in the afore
mentioned parts above. Although the research includes several inadequacies in terms of
quantitative mathematical measurement scales, the chief proponents, application of
conceptual linguistic theories, planning on the semi-structured interview questions and the
overall correlation between language and behaviorism is an entirely new contribution to the
field of linguistics that would successfully outperform and overrule the weaknesses
mentioned in the earlier parts.
REUY3S1 Project 11
1.8 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the respective dissertation for this chapter shall have included, several
descriptive statements on both the research objectives and questions to further provide
insights on the need to conduct a qualitative study on the scope of Malaysian English Accents
(ME). On that note, an effective semi-structured interview session accompanied by relevant
conceptual frameworks will be further developed and respectfully explained in terms of both
linguistic correlations with psychological accuracy of Malaysian English Accents (ME). The
accuracy of the results yielded is extremely essential to the outputs of this research to ensure
that valuable data is not loss during the production of this empirical study.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.0 INTRODUCTION
This section of the research paper shall be dedicated to reviewing renowned research
papers conducted by past scholars in the field of Malaysian English Accent (ME) Studies. On
that note, this short chapter of the Literature Review will be dissected within three chief
scopes. Firstly, being the broader scope of English Accents, secondly narrowing it down to
the Asian English variants of dichotomies and vocabularies, and thirdly focusing on the
empirical outputs of Malaysian English Accents with a justification concerning the large grey
areas left uncharted by past researchers which significantly lacks exploration on the
perceptions of non-native speakers of the English Language. Henceforward, the Literature
Review shall execute both scientific validity and linguistic justifications for the field of
English Accent Studies.
2.1 DEFINITION OF KEY WORD-ACCENT
As mentioned by Rist (2019), the English word Accent is originally derived from, the
Latin word Accentus which is originally defined as a verbal act of singing with melodious
intonations. In the 21st century, English the use of English Accents has significantly
developed to be used in different contexts of discourse particles. Recent papers on Discourse
Analysis accurately proves that the emphasis on the types of English Accents has been placed
based on the different set of Discourse being present at that moment. In this scenario,
preference may be given towards a certain English Accent in sectors of Public Services i.e
Newscasters, and also within the Entertainment Industry as well (Al-Mutairi, 2020). In this
manner, the English Accent may be divided into 3 chief categories firstly being the “Inner
Circle English” that involves countries where English is chiefly spoken as the First Language
in all formal settings. For inference, countries such as Great Britain, the United States of
America, Scotland, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand are classified as having native
speakers of the English Language that are termed “Inner Circle English” (Matsuda, 2019).
Secondly, the “Outer Circle English” revolves around countries that implement
English as their Second Language, but it lacks formal approval to be used as a National
Language in official Parliamentary Settings. For instance, countries that grant the status of
English as their Second Language are India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan,
and the Philippines (Bhatia, 2022).
The presence of English is due to the influence of British Colonialism and European
Imperialism back during the 17th-19th centuries in those countries (Mauranen, 2018). Thirdly,
the “Expanding Circle English” is specifically focused on countries where the status quo and
usage of English are greatly absent. In this scenario, English is only learned as a Foreign
Language (EFL) purpose and may not be commercially used within the daily lives of human
interaction. For example, countries that largely lacks the usage of English speakers are China,
Taiwan, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates
(Ortega, 2018). This phenomenon may be due to the lack of the commercial need for
communicating via English in those countries as major and minor legislations of the
commerce businesses in those countries are chiefly done via the use of the Nation’s own
National Language. Nevertheless, the remarkable traits of English speakers around the globe
have birthed various significant stress markers in oral speech (De Costa & Crowther, 2018).
2.2 REVIEWS OF LITERATURE
2.2.1 Great Britain English Accent Studies
As mentioned by Sharma et al (2022), the field of English studies in “First World

Countries” such as Great Britain upholds a strong perception prestige status quo in preserving
the accent bias during the recent pre-COVID-19 years. in the United Kingdom. The
experimental dataset reveals the intentions for Accents in language analysis and also in
language technology. In this scenario, the results of this accent research yield forth c
various phonetic occurrences with high phonemic coverage. From a deeper perspective,
these are generic pronunciations of hailing from major airlines around the globe as well as
generic names in various native accents; and also, the native pronunciations of local
vocabularies (Paulasto et al, 2020). Interestingly, idiomatic surveys were conducted to
observer the overlapping lines for all speakers, that exhibit similar lines to other existing
linguistic sources (such as the CSTR VCTK corpus and voice accent archives). Therefore,
the samplings of native English speakers were largely present such as the ones from the
Southern, Central, Northern, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish (Donnelly et al, 2022).
On the overall spectrum , the pronunciation of words has been standardized into a
language that has been modified with drastic vocal changes, and with the spelling also
being starkly different i.e Neighbour vs Neighbours Practise and Practice, Renovate and
Renovate
in British and American English respectively). On the other hand, these differences
do not reflect phonetic accent differences in dialects (Evans, 2019). On that note, a case
must be made that, predicting the manner of pronunciations is not entirely impossible a
word from one local dialect to another regional usage of dialects or slang, but also factors
such as slang or pidgeons from the local origins as in the Isles of Wales (Williams &
Cooper, 2021). Beyond that, historical developments have influenced the accents and
pronunciations, and phonetic variations in British English. In this scenario, these specific
dialects witness generalized samplings, as in the generalized spelling for old dialects or
varieties of English that are not the dominant language in day-to-day communication (Mayr
et al, 2020).
As a result, these regional accents display the opposite effect when a Native speaker
attempts to learn new words in British English in formal academic Institutions such as
Schools and Higher-Tertiary Institutions (Jayne et al, 2022). Henceforth, the regional
Accent of the English language largely varies depending on the factors of divergence of the
speech produced orally, as each individual possesses unique ways of articulating their
pronunciations (Pradana, 2019). On the other hand, pragmatic features such as idioms also
exhibit exceptional use of grammar, vocabulary choice, pronunciation, and intonation in
oral communication, whereby a conclusion can be made that chiefly focuses on the features
of speech from an individual speaker. Consequently, a speaker's accent may be largely
affected by external factors of peers, media, work, and also the domestic environment.
The dominating influencing factors of a speaker’s way of pronouncing words are

chiefly dependent on the locality where the speaker spent their childhood during the critical
learning period accompanied by the localized English accents of his or her family members
and other formal factors when they are exposed to assimilate new English accents at school
and work, committed due to common peer influences i.e friendships and relationships
(Prina, 2022). It cannot be denied that in the 21 st century, mass communication media and
refined entertainment shall largely also influence the way a speaker articulates words in the
English language, On the other hand, the personal habits of a speaker may have a
significant impact on the way he or she speaks in a particular English Accent. But the chief
factor is also contributed by the psychology of age, gender, and sexuality of the speaker as
well (Cetin, 2022). To recapitulate, although studies concerning British English Accent
studies have yielded tremendous results in the fields of Accents, it largely lacks the
precepts on the perceptions of young speakers on the factors which influence them to
assimilate or adopt another English accent concerning Human Behaviour Modelling
Theory.
2.2.2 Australian English Academic Communications
Studies conducted with Australian English listeners birthed results that the majority
of the English vowels uttered with the Australian Accent as well, exhibit the amalgamation
of four lesser-known regional variants of English that implement articulation of vowels on
a higher pitch compared to Australian English (Stewart et al, 2020). These would include
Accents hailing from such as London, Yorkshire, Newcastle (UK), and finally New
Zealand. In that regard, the articulation of words revealed that only a small percentage of
the vowel differences occur as described in socio-phonics research whilst being
demonstrated in their stimulus materials provided. Henceforward, this caused massive
perceptual difficulties for Australian listeners than the corresponding Australian English
vowels (Loakes, 2019). The phenomenon of perceptual tolerance in the vowel changes, and
also perceptual assimilations of phonetic details are executed within abstract vowel
categories, displays the differences of Australians pronouncing English albeit differently
compared to British English speakers and their Standardized Accent (SE) in the UK.
On a note, the pronunciation features of Australian English only display chief

differences with English words that are derived from the vowel categories. In this manner,
words such as fleece, kit, dress, trap, palm, strut, goose, foot, thought, lot, near, square,
nurse, cure, face, goat, price, choice, mouth, and bath. From the database scales, the
Academic usage of such vowel words in Australian Schools displays a 10% range of
phonotactic usage in terms of articulation that is considerably low compared to the range of
British English Accent Studies (Hughes et al 2020). Furthermore, regional variations of
English, do exhibit several profound characteristics in Australian English Accents. In this
manner, Australian Dialectological Academic Studies have only seemed to produce minor
correlations of Accent being inextricably linked to the locality of an individual. In this
manner, there are minor stereotypes of English Accents that exist in Higher-Tertiary
Institutions in Australia For inference, the Californian English Accent is expected to be
used with minimal variation in Oral English Assessments (Law, 2019). Interestingly,
Accents of regional outback phonological variations are not largely favored in both
Northern and Southern Australian Schools either. Broader scopes of research depict results
that, migrated Americans students, especially from the locality of Michigan areas have
immensely struggled with expressing themselves in the uniformity of the Australian
English Vowel Pronunciations as the speech patterns tend to be seen as delineating from the
dialectal speech patterns (Richard, 2018).
Nevertheless, this past study also exhibited that socio-cultural influences of History
have an overall effect on the Australian Accent used in Higher-Tertiary Academic
Institutions in Melbourne and Sydney was rather inconclusive. But unlike mediocre
regional vowel influences in Australian Pronunciations, the limited cultural stereotypes
observed by the Australians tend to describe the validity conducted in this past research.
(Collins et al, 2019). In this category, Australian Schools tend to place the Received
Pronunciation (RP) as the benchmark in their practicality for assessing the validities of
Accent varieties. Based on the pronunciation benchmarks, the Australian English Accent
was rather depicted as having a considerably good-mannered speech trend, whereas the
Welsh English Accent was illustrated as dull with the dichotomic reasonings of being slow
to comprehend with low diphthong elements in recorded speech (Lawson et al, 2019).
Quantitative aspects of speech were discovered based on assessing the Genders of
Australian English Accents. In this scenario, Australian Women tend to be exercised a
higher range of vowels in their speech especially the Young Adults undergoing Higher
Education at a 90% range. Therefore, gender is also associated with the overall Language
usage of Australian English Accents with the articulation of Vowels being dominant at
hand. Nonetheless, the research conducted in Australian Academic Studies has only
colossally indicated more inhibited on the dogmatic approach of quantitative outputs of the
percentage rather than addressing the reasonings or influences of the Australian speakers
especially the Women on pronouncing English words with a high-vowel pitch (Cardoso et
al, 2019).
2.2.3 Indian English Accent Studies
The Realm of “Expanding Circle” refers to countries where English is being spoken
as a Second Language within a country’s commerce and socio-cultural status. In this
scenario, India is classified as a country with 125 million English speakers, thus granting the
country its title of having the World’s Second Largest English, Speaking Country in the
Asian Continent (Wiltshire, 2020). From a deeper perspective, the articulation of Indian
English is distinctively recognizable to other English speakers, due to the excessive linguistic
modifications done by Indians on the precepts of consonants, vowels, suprasegmental
features of stressing certain articulations on words, and also the overall intonation of it with
local elements, as opposed towards the Received Pronunciation (RP). With that being
considered, Indian English is starkly different from the British English Accent with most
inflectional similarities being displayed in Hindi English (Guntur, 2020).
On that note, Hindi English has been described as the dominant category of Indian
English has reached the linguistic status of Exonormatively Stabilisation with the creative
combination of local prosodic features, especially in localities of Bombay, New Delhi,
Rajasthan, Pune, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Lucknow, and also in a town called Wellington in
Tamil Nadu, India (Maxwell, 2021). From a deeper perspective, Indian English highly
features differences from the areas of the accented syllables between the onset and the coda
in suprasegmental features
The empirical study conducted seemed to display pitch-contour differences between

Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Tamil, speakers whilst communicating in their daily lives. In
this scenario, the suprasegmental stress on vowels is not considerably high amongst Tamil
and Telugu Speakers in the use of common noun words such as bat, hat, auto, thosai, gulab
jamun, jalebi, Vodafone, Coca-Cola, Air and Water (Krishna et al, 2018). In this quantitative
output, Tamil and Telugu speakers of Indian English do not exhibit the usage of lower pitch-
vowel variations when pronouncing it. Interestingly, Hindi and Gujarati speakers of Indian
English display an exceedingly high amount of nuclear coda rimes when it comes to their
manner of articulating adjectival words such as yellow Holi powder, enormous, fun Diwali,
fast and cheerful. Whereas, Bengali speakers of Indian English depict a mid-range of
pronouncing their words in verb phrases such as sing, run, kick, fall, sleep, laugh, walk,
swim, jump, race and slap. Based on this statistical information prescribed from Indian
English Studies, the influence of sociocultural factors does have a profound influence on the
way Indians articulate their vowels (Krishna et al, 2020).
The phenomenon of High, Low, and Mid rising word stress among Indian accents is
denoted by the speech characteristics that are influenced by peer influences as also evidenced
in South Asian English Accents. Furthermore, the emerging influence of the Dravidian
languages of South India also grants the Indians to annex high pre-nuclear rime positions in
their pronunciations whilst uttering verb phrases. (Acheme & Cionea, 2022). Another factor
may be caused due to the influence of the mother tongues of each Indian speaker may have a
significant effect on the way each regional speaker pronounces their words, especially the
classes of noun phrases. In this manner, the socio-cultural elements indirectly prompt Indian
speakers to assimilate the tonal inflections from their respective Mother tongues into the
English language whilst largely not considering the fact that English is also a tonal language
and thus its classes of noun phrases uphold its own suprasegmental inflectional tones as
unique as other Indo-European languages (Sridhar, 2020).
Nonetheless, the studies of Indian English Accents in the past only seemed to exhibit
dominantly the categories or the mere types of pronunciation features whilst leaving the
fields of Malaysian English Accent (ME) and the perceptions of its English speakers a topic
left uncharted.
2.2.4 Elements of Speech in Thailand English Vocabularies
As mentioned by Tassev (2021), Discourse Analysis in Thai English or commonly

known as Tinglish or Thainglish refers to spoken English by the local people of Thailand.
The occurrence of the differences of English Accents in the received pronunciation is
conceived via the creative combination of language interference phenomenon which heavily
influences their phonemic lexicons, grammar, and overall vocabulary. From a deeper
perspective, Thai English is classified as a heavily tonal version of English which takes a
long time for the local speaker to pronounce them although the words are in English, they
have uttered with Thai phonological influences and may sometimes denote an alternate
semantic meaning (Tassev, 2020). In this scenario, past studies conducted in analyzing the
word articulations of Thai students from Higher Tertiary institutions exhibited the
phenomenon of local Thais displaying tremendous difficulty with the English word stress. In
order to accommodate their vocal inaudibility, past researchers have discovered that Thai
College Students have creatively decided to incorporate the last syllables in the English
language with an additional high pitch. As evidenced by Sagnok & Jaturapitakkul (2019),
this linguistic effort is considered by the Thai due to the influence of their local mother
tongue influence. From a deeper perspective, Thai language phonology naturally exhibits 21
phonemic articulations in total whereas English only incorporates 15 vowels in its
grammatical input. Therefore, this status enables the Thai people to imitate the English
vowels with minimal effort with respectful consideration towards their creative ability to
merge the high intonation pitch.
On the other hand, the Semantic properties of Thai English have been an issue of
great interest to past linguistic scholars. In this manner, there are many words from Thai
English that do not necessarily reflect the original meaning of British English. For inference,
the Tinglish phrase Are you spicy? would not mean to question the charming personality of
the individual or the sexual attractiveness of a person as observed in British English of the
Inner Circle Countries (Kai-Kan-Dee & Nonthapot, 2020). But that would simply mean that
they are inquiring if the food being consumed in that particular situational context is spicy,
savory, moderate, or bland in its taste. Interestingly the Denotative properties of Thai English
have even surprised Discourse
Sociologists in the past as evidenced by the local phrase, there are many Batmans
tonight would not correlate with a fictional character called Batman in plural forms, but it
rather simply means that the speaker has observed the presence of nocturnal warm-blooded
furry mammals called Bats flying in numerous hours at night (Kalra & Thanavisuth, 2018).
The spectrum of Thai English Accents also involves the creative adaptation of vowels
in their speech. For inference, elements of Diphthongs and Triphthongs are creatively
extended to simply form longer versions of the original vowels in English such as the noun
blade being extended with /ệ/. Nevertheless, exceptions are locally observed with certain
Diphthongs ending with /i/ and /u/ which are then recomposed as Thai English Diphthongs
that commonly end with /w/: “tieặj/ in words verbs such as view into /wḯw/. Interestingly Thai
English Accents exhibited monosyllabic words that all chiefly end with sonorants which
commonly end with the mid-tone as its main suprasegmental feature (Tarrayo et al, 2021).
On the other hand, words that end in obstruent class forms may be replicated in a low tone or
higher variational tone. Furthermore, polysyllabic English words also comply with a similar
adherence as with monosyllabic words in Thai English Accents (Boonsuk & Fang, 2022).
Finally, the ending consonants of Thai English would normally end with obstruent features
that may appear as low, high, or a falling tone depending on the frequency it is being uttered
in a single conversation. As a matter of fact, English loanwords are oftentimes amalgamated
innovatively where the tonal stress markers in pronunciation are generically omitted as they
are commonly pronounced with a different tonal scale which is the opposite of how the
English word is spelled. To encapsulate, the past studies of Thai English have also
dynamically incorporated the description of stress markers on their pronunciation and also the
remarkable ability of the local Thai People to creatively combine new ways of articulation in
their attempts to further maximize the potential usage of the English Language (Chaipuapape,
2021). Nonetheless, there are many grey areas left behind by past scholars concerning the
issues of Standardized Accent (SE) and its perceptions among the youth, especially among
University College Students in general.
2.2.5 Malaysian English Vocabulary Studies
Speech functions in a language constantly change and progress overtime in a

communal setting. In this scenario, Malaysian speakers tend to incorporate certain
vocabularies with a diverse set of speech expressions i.e isolated words, connected words,
continuous speech, and spontaneous speech (Yoong, 2022). However, the studies conducted
by Shamsuddin et al (2019) have displayed several contradictions in the field of accents. In
this scenario, the studies have discovered that certain Malaysian undergraduate students
preferred to speak using the American accent in their word pronunciation and have observed
its characteristics instead of using the local Standardized Accent (SE) in daily
communication. Candidates in that study have mentioned that the American accent is
preferably easier to comprehend that any other accent.
Apart from that, the vocabulary of Malaysians is also heavily influenced by the
elements of Manglish which can be described as elements of Mangled English. This
Malaysian creole-hybrid consists of words originating from a diverse set of languages such as
Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese, and even Malayalam (Jeong, Thorén
& Othman, 2020). As cited by, Lenart & Buvalin (2020) Malaysian speakers attempted to
maintain their local Standardized Accent (SE) even when communicating with foreign
delegates and expectorates from English-speaking countries. From a deeper perspective, the
Malaysian Manglish creole-hybrid witnesses simplified versions of grammar in everyday
conversations such as “can I borrow a pen ah?” instead of “can I borrow a pen?” Moreover,
the undeniable aspect of Manglish can be examined where Malaysian speakers would use the
suffix -lah in their everyday conversations such as “why lah?” or “how lah?” in everyday
communications. From a deeper perspective, Manglish also chiefly incorporates vocabularies
borrowed from other languages such as “paiseh” (Hokkien), “dabao” (Cantonese), “tahan”
(Malay) and “cincai” (Mandarin), (Yap & Pillai, 2018). Nevertheless, past studies on
Malaysian English vocabulary have not conducted adequate research on the word
pronunciations and characteristics of local Malaysian English accents in the field of
Linguistic studies. Nevertheless, research concerning Malaysian English Accent (ME)
Studies was largely absent in contributing a new scope to the field of English Studies.
2.2.6 Malaysian English Diglossia Studies
English language in Malaysia is divided into three distinct levels of creole-hybrids

acrolect, mesolect, and basilect. In this scenario, the acrolect creole is chiefly spoken by
Malaysians who possess a nigh high-excellence of native-level proficiency in the English
language. However, only a minor percentage of Malaysian speakers are fluent in it. On the
other hand, the mesolect creole can be described as a localized Malaysian English Accent
(ME) also dominantly used by proficient speakers within the main ethnic groups where it
witnesses minor deviations in the grammar and syntax from the native-level English
(Choomthong & Manowong 2020). The basilect can be defined as an informal variation of
Malaysian English Accent (ME) and it would be only spoken by Malaysians who possess
limited proficiency and grammatical vocabulary in the English language. Therefore,
Malaysians would also often practice the act of code-switching in informal settings.
Interestingly, Tan et al (2021) have mentioned in their writings that, many Non-English
words would also be borrowed into the Malaysian English Accents (ME) among Malaysian
speakers such as, “Bumiputera”, “Kampung”, “Yang di-Pertuan Agong”, “Ang-pow”,
“Nasi lemak”, “Roti canai” “teh tarik” and “Dhoti”. Therefore, Bilingualism and
Multilingualism is the dominant factor that contributes to the Diglossia varieties among
Malaysian speakers even in the English language. However, despite the impressive feats of
analysis conducted by past researchers, they lacked adequate validity in terms of the
perceptions and factors of Malaysian University College students in learning to adapt to the
local Malaysian English Accents (ME) accents and the influencing factors that shape their
localized accents.
2.2.7 Sub-Varieties of Malaysian English (minor-component)
SUB-VARIETIES OF MALAYSIAN ENGLISH ACCENTS (ME)

Types Acrolect Mesolect Basilect
Characteristics Formal Malaysian Medium-dialectal Jargon-based
English Malaysian English Malaysian English
Verbatim of use Verbal and written Occasional verbal Only for
use and written use verbal use
Informal settings and Only for colloquial
Scope of use Formal settings for National use amongst speakers
Intelligibility of low-solidarity
Examples of use Malaysian English Malaysian radio Malaysian Shopee
newscasters advertisements advertisements
Table 1: Varieties of Malaysian English in General Source (Low, 2019)
As depicted in the Table above, Malaysian English may be classified into three main
categories. Firstly, the Acrolect category is commonly brandished by intellectuals who
possess a nigh-high fluency and competence in English. However, only a small percentage of
Malaysians exhibit this rare level of accurate fluency. Therefore, Acrolect is a highly valued
English in Malaysia as it is the only variant of Malaysian English which is Internationally
Intelligible, and is used for formal occasions and written documents of governance
legislations, which perfectly conforms to the Standards of British English (Powell & Saw,
2022).
Secondly, the Mesolect can be described as a more localized form of Malaysian

English which is still exercised by competent speakers to communicate in slightly informal
settings. Therefore this form of Malaysian English may exhibit acceptable forms of
grammatical errors, colloquial syntax terminologies, and slight deviations from the Standards
of British English. This slight compromise is exercised in the Mesolect Malaysian English as
it is designed to serve as a useful medium to shatter the communication barrier between the
three main races of Malaysia the Malays, Chinese, and Indians (May & Shiun, 2020).
Therefore, this shall minimize grammatical confusion with the intended message being
relayed decently.
Thirdly, the Basilect is a form of Malaysian English that is deemed highly informal,
and therefore it is generically associated with Malaysians only possessing a minimal level of
vocabulary competence. Interestingly, the Basilect is the only level of Malaysian English that
chiefly exhibits hybrid-creole words or pidgin words which are locally known as Manglish.
Since it has far deviated from the Standards of British English, the Basilect is commonly hard
to comprehend in formal settings, but it is used to minimize solidarity and to maximize
comprehension whilst sacrificing the grammatical accuracy or fluency of the words spoken in
discourse (Leo & David, 2021). To summarise, although past linguistic research has been
conducted to analyze the localized speech discourse continuums between these three English
varieties in Malaysia, speakers may choose to code-switch them depending on the situational
context (Lin et al, 2018). Although numerous research has been done concerning the levels of
Malaysian English with respectful addressed towards Manglish, it leaves a large grey area
concerning the Perceptions of Malaysian College Students to adopt and assimilate themselves
towards Standardized Accent in a particular Academic Program at Higher-Tertiary
Institutions
2.3 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, a tremendous amount, of empirical productions have been done and

theoretical backgrounds of the English Accents in both fields of Native and Non-Native
Speakers. Apart from that deep analysis has also been conducted regarding Kachru’s Circle
of World Englishes to better comprehend the types of English Accents, pronunciations, and
Accents being produced. Nevertheless, the scope of Malaysian English Accent (ME) and its
perceptions among Malaysian College Students is a largely uncharted topic that needs further
research to be done. Henceforward, this research seeks to address the grey area of perceptions
and the influences of Students in adopting the Malaysian English Accent (ME).
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCH
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 INTRODUCTION
This research was chiefly carried out to solely determine to three different objectives.
Firstly, it was intended to identify the relationships between English word pronunciations and
perceptions towards the Standardized Accents (SE), secondly, it was orchestrated to
recognize the perceptions and factors of Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology students in learning to adapt to the local Standardized Accent (SE) and thirdly it
was performed, to explore the influences of the local Standardized Accent (SE) in shaping the
speech influences of Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology
students. As cited by Mohajan (2021), a research methodology can be classified as a purely
theoretical framework that is annexed to organize, the numerous empirical efforts and
approaches conducted in a study. Therefore, the precise methodology of this research from
where the data was extracted, was chiefly excavated via implementing the descriptive and
correlational strategies. Henceforth, the following contents of this chapter shall essentially
highlight the numerous descriptions of diverse variables in this study, types of empirical
approaches exercised to scientifically carry out the study, outline designs of the research, and
other characteristics and features of the tools used to excavate the valuable information for
the overall data collection, which essentially includes samplings of the respondents, medians
of race and gender shall also be respectfully addressed.
3.2 RESEARCH APPROACH
The dominant approach of this study witnesses significant employment of the

qualitative approach being highly exercised in the data extraction of the upcoming chapters.
As specifically highlighted by Leverage Edu (2022), the qualitative research design witnesses
the empirical tactical outputs of variables in a study which are often explanatory in nature to
which mere statistics of numeracy may be unable to adhere to produce a valid or a reliable
result in terms of data extraction procedures. In simple terminology, the qualitative research
design brandishes the prowess of keenly focusing, on the reasons why a particular scientific
theory exists and the precedented outcomes of the response and various perspectives of
fellow respondents in a study. Nevertheless, a basic rudimentary sampling of medians and
racial ethnicity shall be addressed to direct the research toward the population samplings of
the respondents who willingly contributed to this study.
3.3 PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH
An academic thesis paper that hails from any Higher-Tertiary Institution would
unquestionably address both the purposes and the significance of the research being
conducted. In this scenario, this study seeks to highlight both the dynamics of exploratory and
explanatory outputs in data extraction. Firstly, the realm of exploratory design seeks to delve
into the scopes of untouched or uncharted academic topics. From a deeper perspective, the
exploratory sequential design has been modified to suit the nature of this particular study,
where the gatherings and analysis of qualitative data are first presented with the minimal
findings of the population samplings of racial ethnicity, and median outputs are examined
later aforehand (Ashworth, 2021). Nonetheless, the facets of the explanatory framework
primarily place its emphasis on the feeble dimensions of an academic topic which are rarely
provided with any empirical attention in terms of data analysis. Henceforward, this research
paper is strongly focused on the perceptions of factors, and the influences of Tunku Abdul
Rahman University of Management & Technology students in their linguistic attempts to
adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME).
3.4 RESEARCH DESIGN
The research designs that are employed to study the valuable data of the study
include, two basic types, namely which are descriptive and correlational designs. Firstly, the
descriptive research design dominantly places the researcher to expound or illustrate the
variable conditions influenced by the ever-changing circumstances or any other valid cases in
the thesis materials. In this context, the researcher would obtain valuable data for a vigilant
analysis, whilst assembling the newly birthed results to be submitted in a comprehensible
manner. However, the researcher abstains from scientifically employing tactics of
manipulation nor modifying any of the existing research variables that may be exhibited in a
thesis, (Tahmasbi & Moghaddam, 2021). Alternatively, the researcher operates by merely
observing the variables and measuring the outputs being produced in a study. On the other
hand, the dynamics of correlational designs, superiorly assert themselves towards
investigating the relationships between the existing variables whilst prohibiting the authority
of the researcher to conduct any forms of autonomous modifications nor to exercise any
governance of control in a variable.
Interestingly, a flow of a link between two or more variables may be tremendously birthed
via correlation investigations (Pandey & Pandey, 2021). Therefore, the current aim of this
study is focused on analyzing the relationships, and influences of factors of Tunku Abdul
Rahman University of Management & Technology students in their efforts to learn to adapt
to the Standardized Accent (SE).
3.5 TARGET POPULATION
This research paper has carried out purposeful selections of choosing Malaysian
University College students hailing from the Course of English Studies at Tunku Abdul
Rahman University of Management & Technology Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In this study, a
total of 10 students who were pursuing their majors in English with Education and Drama
were selected as their utilization of the English language was deemed to be a sample worthy
to be analyzed to extract the data. Nevertheless, the supreme criterion of justification for the
selection of those students as those respondents not only hailed from an English-speaking
background but had also influenced the multilingual cultural elements of the local Malaysian
society. Apart from that, their ability, exposure, and ability to efficaciously communicate in
the English language, accompanied by their command to comprehend authentic academic
materials in English are far more impressive that surpasses the language command of other
students from other major programs in the English language.
3.6 DESCRIPTION OF SAMPLE SIZE
The sample size of an empirical study chiefly refers to the number of respondents,
participating in either a semi-structured interview session or a questionnaire handout, which
significantly aids the yield of valuable data outputs in a research paper. Furthermore, this
study shall seek to annex specific symbols which shall further benefit the tabulation of the
qualitative results of this study. (Snyder, 2019). In this scenario, the number of participants
shall be respectfully represented by n, which correlates to the magnitude of the qualitative
outputs comprising factors of the precision of the research estimates and also considering the
influence of the data yields themselves to draw out an effective conclusion during the
discussion of the study. Although certain methodologies executed in previous studies by past
researchers consequentially proved an arbitrary status that hails from a 70%-80% statistical
outputs with only a 5% significant range, this study shall observe the ideal sample size of
only annexing 10
English-speaking respondents who have received a co-educational Standard National

Malaysian Schools evidently from a National Primary and National Secondary Malaysian
Schools. Henceforward, the outcome of this study is dominantly aimed at only receiving
multiple feedback from a semi-structured interview done qualitatively.
3.7 DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUE
The qualitative nature of this study strongly hints at the need of gathering valuable
amounts of data, via the employment of semi-structured interview sessions with questions
that strongly correlate towards the outputs of both the research questions and objectives
presented earlier in Chapter 1. Therefore, the primary method of data extraction was
collected through the personal interaction of the researcher with the fellow respective
respondents.
3.8 DESCRIPTION OF THE SAMPLING TECHNIQUE
As mentioned by, Rahman et al (2022), a sampling technique in an empirical research

framework can be described as, a procedure or other visible identifications of a specific
process to excavate data, through which the entities of qualitative samples may have been
carefully selected. From a deeper perspective, a sampling technique may also
methodologically refer to the selection of small proportions of individuals from a societal
setting that shall tremendously benefit the overall scientific findings of the study collectively.
According to Shaheen & Prandhan (2019), qualitative research would frequently employs
two dominant sampling techniques known as, purposeful sampling and convenience sampling
procedures. Firstly, purposeful sampling techniques allow the researcher to recruit the
respective respondents who are capable of contributing a comprehensive factual account of
detailed information of a certain variable phenomenon in an empirical study. Nevertheless,
the code and conduct of this particular sampling procedure may appear to be highly
subjective or independent in its nature. Therefore, it is the sole responsibility of the researcher
to take charge by excavating the relevant criteria or outputs of each respondent that are
relevant to both the research objectives and questions of a study (Ding et al, 2020). Secondly,
the convenience sampling technique on the other hand predominantly deals with researchers
only handpicking respondents who are rather easily contactable or reachable in their own
geographical locality which may prove to be an
easier form of recruitment with minimal effort. Therefore, the geographic location of the
researcher and the respondents may appear to be almost identical in certain qualitative studies
(Gill, 2020). Henceforth, this particular study shall seek to decisively annex the convenient
sampling technique by selecting 10 respondents who are pursuing their Bachelor's Degree
Programs in English Majors, at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
3.9 QUALITATIVE TECHNIQUES
There shall be two major types of qualitative techniques used in the facets of testing
the hypothesis which is commonly classified as, descriptive techniques and correlational
techniques. In simpler terms, descriptive research design dominantly places the researcher to
expound or illustrate the variable conditions influenced by the ever-changing circumstances
or any other valid cases in the thesis materials. In this context, the researcher would obtain
valuable data for a vigilant analysis, whilst assembling the newly birthed results to be
submitted in a comprehensible manner. In this scenario, the data extraction shall be done by
conducting a semi-structured interview for up to 10-15 minutes per respondent. Henceforth,
these were the following interview questions were questioned in this qualitative study.
A. Which country best represents the culture of English? Why?

B. Which accent is more influential for you in developing your overall English
proficiency? Why?
C. Which accent is easier for Malaysian College students to speak?
D. Which Malaysian English Accent (ME) dominates in Malaysia and thus strengthens
the power of English as a second language among Malaysian College students?
E. Which Malaysian English Accent (ME) is more accessible for you to find authentic
materials for your assignments?
F. Which Malaysian English Accent (ME) is more accessible in terms of diversity and
quantity of authentic materials?
G. How does a job occupation influence the way you speak in the Malaysian English
Accent (ME)? (Exposure to the language) What is the predominant language use of
Malaysian parents at home? What language do the family members of the parents or
families of the respondents speak?
In a qualitative study, the conduct of a semi-structured interview among respondents

is a highly crucial procedure for extracting the data to yield results in the discussion section.
In this scenario, the core questions are designed primarily to deal with factors of job
occupation being an influencing variable in the way Tunku Abdul Rahman University of
Management & Technology students communicate using the Malaysian English Accent
(ME). Furthermore, questions concerning the types of Malaysian English Accent (ME) being
more favoured in the aspects of students, especially those who hail from the Program of
English Studies in their academic capability to find authentic materials in the English
language. In this scenario, the core questions designed seek to unfold key essentials of the
types of Malaysian English being favoured amongst Tunku Abdul Rahman University of
Management & Technology students. On the other hand, sub-questions are also sculptured to
pique the curiosity of fellow respondents with the possibility of yielding multiple results.
Nevertheless, the researcher has exercised strict reinforcement concerning the samplings of
the respondents. In this manner, the selected respondents were individuals who only share an
academic background of students who received their both primary and secondary education
within National Government Schools.
This is to ensure fair reasoning as to validate a criterion that all of the respondents
hailed from the same educational background during the critical learning period in their
childhood days, prior to their education in a Higher-Tertiary Institution. Therefore, in the
interview, respondents would be able to provide multiple inferences in regards to a specific
country having a preferred range of English accents and the ones which are dominantly
influential for the overall proficiency of Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology students.
The qualitative data sampling in this research would also annex the incorporation of
fellow respondents, uttering a simple speaking task, based on the following situation:
A New Student needs to go to the CITC (Communication, Information Technology Centre)

from the library on foot. How do you give instructions to direct them in the appropriate
manner?
In addition to that, respondents will be provided with external prompts of sentences

that they may use during the utterance of this controlled speech such as:
- Take the Blue Line

- Continue walking straight
- Change to the gray line of Block R
- Climb up the 2 flights of stairways

- Walk past the Canteen.
As depicted in the chosen methodological techniques above, a definition of the

accents and other linguistic terminologies shall be given by the researcher, during the
respective semi-structured interview questions in a controlled setting.
Besides that, two short mini-clips from the American Situational-Comedy titled
“Friends”, were also played. This has been done as it easily stimulated the understanding of
the respondents in terms of the basic foundation of accents themselves, during the
conversations uttered by the fictional characters in the video.
In this context, the execution of providing a fixed context of speech such as the
campus locations been viewed as a worthy sampling technique by the researcher, as it ensures
that respondents do not venture out of the topic during their speech which is a controlled
variable. This is also done as the 10 respondents from the course of English Studies would be
familiar with the chief campus settings i.e. library to the CITC (Communication, Information,
Technology Centre) during the post-COVID-19 endemic stage. Furthermore, the option of
recording live conversations from respondents will also be carried out by the researcher as it
shall display a tremendous amount of stress, patterns, word pronunciations, and articulations
in a live-controlled speech. Therefore, this sampling technique shall only seek to record the
audio of respondents reading the chosen paragraph by transcribing their speech both in
normal orthography and phonetic transcriptions in a controlled setting. In terms of criterion
validity, the recording of each respondent’s voice would be more natural compared to
monotonous reading, apart from that this sampling technique also chiefly witnesses a
significant level of concurrent validity by renowned English Language Testing Institutions
such as (IELTS) International English Language Testing System and also IGCSE
(International General Certificate of Secondary Education) done within Cambridge
Institutions. In this manner, even speaking proficiency tests such as those mentioned above,
provide a controlled variable speech to avoid the candidates from venturing off topic. Apart
from that, several ethical issues shall also be addressed such as the duration of the recorded
speech, frequency, and types of pronunciations. Henceforward, the results of this study
would examine the qualitative aspects of each word being pronounced either correctly or
incorrectly depending on the sociolinguistic factors of the speech organs and the preferred
Standardized Accent (SE) of the respondents themselves.
3.10 DESCRIPTION OF CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
The following charts below illustrate two relevant conceptual frameworks, developed
by renowned intellectuals who are Professors Albert Bandura and Noam Chomsky that will
be assimilated to further justify the correlational findings of the samplings in the chosen
respondents.
LAD Brain Theories of

Module Languages
Linguistic Grammatical
Phonology
Linguistic Input Processing Skills Competence
Existing Morphology
Knowledge
Syntax
Accents
Diagram 1: Theories of Language Acquisition Development (Gomez, 2020)
The Diagram above portrays the chief theories of Language Acquisition Development
that were birthed by renowned linguist, Professor Noam Chomsky. From his assessments, the
human mind is described to possess a remarkable innate ability to comprehend Universal
Grammar (UG) with precepts of rules, that are found in all languages across the globe
regardless of racial, cultural, or religious differences. From a deeper perspective, Vrooman
(2018) mentioned, that all children across the globe possess an additional organ that they
possess at birth which is called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which helps in the
development of linguistic processing skills triggered, by a child’s natural environment. Given
that children are unaware of grammatical accuracy during the critical period, they are unable
to comprehend every single word uttered by adults, but they are still nonetheless able to grasp
the implicit meaning behind the utterance via stress in certain syllables and word
pronunciations. In this scenario, whenever children are exposed to words or sentences during
the critical period, they adopt them naturally prior to behavior modeling which shall be
discussed shortly later in this chapter.
The pre-existing grammatical knowledge must also be probed and linguistically

stimulated by external outputs of a language’s phonology, morphology and syntax in order
for children to construct accurate sentences and also to possess a certain degree of accent in
their word pronunciation. However, the claim Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is
described to be a naturally stimulated speech cycle compared to external behavior modeling
(Sobecks, 2020). Henceforth, in this study, 10 respondents will be selected from the Program
of English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology as
their Universal Grammar (UG) and early grammatical inputs were honed in National Primary
and Secondary Schools (SK) & (SMK) prior to behavior modeling during days in Higher-
Tertiary Education Institutions.
Human beings Human remember

observe surroundings each other’s actions
The Human behavior is learnt and

replicated via modelling
Human begin
reproducing these Human mentally
actions rehearse actions
Diagram 1: The Social Learning Theory, (Bandura, 2019)
The Diagram above depicts the psychological patterns of human beings learning to
adopt the real-life behavioral characteristics observed from their daily surroundings birthed
by the renowned Canadian Psychologist, Professor Albert Bandura. In this scenario, children
reciprocate and recall existing linguistic speech patterns, sounds, and syntactical features of a
given language which is in this case English from their localized primary and secondary
education. From a deeper perspective, as children grow up from teenagers to young adults,
they are frequently psychologically nurtured with sufficient external exposure to the English
language during their Higher-Tertiary Education i.e., peer influence, exposure to various
foreign English series broadcasted on movie streaming sites such as Netflix, Amazon Prime
and even video streaming sites such as Youtube, Vimeo, and Daily Motion shall have a
strong effect, in the way students from the Course of English Studies adopt towards the
characteristics of Malaysia’s own local Malaysian English Accents (ME). Therefore, the
phenomenon of constructive reinforcement occurs.
As cited by Rumjaun & Narod (2020), they complement Bandura’s social learning
theory that human beings learn to exhibit exotic aspects of language such as accents,
phonological features, syntactical stops, and even tonal pitches although they may be
unfamiliar with a particular pattern of speech by themselves. Nonetheless, positive
reinforcement occurs, when human beings receive positive responses i.e. cheerful peer
feedback from classmates who congratulate them for pronouncing words in English in a
certain way or to adopt a particular Standardized Accent (SE), they then begin reproducing a
distinct pattern of speech repeatedly, in a psychological phenomenon addressed as “behavior
modeling” in accents (Abdullah & Ahmed, 2022).
Emotional
Emotional
Independence
Dependence
Empathy
Self-Reliance
MALE FEMALE
Emotional Emotional
Control Expressiveness
Diagram 3: Psychology of Human Behaviour in Accent Based on Gender (Bandura et al, 2021).
The Diagram above depicts several minor yet essential aspects of human accent
patterns from a psychological perspective, which clearly complements the use of
Standardized Accents (SE) among the students from the Course of English Studies at Tunku
Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology As mentioned by, Agur & Ozor
(2021), the use of speech especially in terms of English accents, can be viewed as sex-
appropriate being dynamically exhibited in the respective gender. In this manner, male
speakers of the English language are classified as being emotionally independent where they
rarely conform to the emotional precepts of their mind with an exception of a few being anger
or frustration that may influence their decision to learn to adapt or to drop off the adopted
standardized accents caused by external factors in their environment i.e., academic stress
caused by deadlines. Nevertheless, male speakers exercise self-reliance in terms of word
pronunciations and tonal stress which is chiefly influenced by their abilities of self-reliance
being a mental composition technique before speaking a sentence.
On the other hand, female speakers of the English language tend to exhibit a colossal factor
of emotional dependence in their use of Standardized Accents (SE). In this manner, female
speakers are dominantly psychologically influenced by their surrounding peer's expressions
during the uttered discourse of word pronunciations, stress patterns, and syntactical elements
(Taylor et al, 2020). Therefore, women are more likely to be even more emotionally
influenced compared to men as they tend to incorporate a diverse number of feelings i.e.,
love, empathy, envy, and hatred that shape their pattern to adopt a certain Standardized
Accent (SE) in the English language.
Diagram 4: Practical Annexation of PLAB and PhoTransEdit Software.
The future discussion section of this study would include the Pimsleur Language
Assessment Battery (PLAB), developed by Italian Linguist, Paul Pimsleur as a Phonetic
Transcription is required to compare it via constructing a table-side-by-side with the same
words but with different pronunciation patterns transcribed phonetically via a table (Frumkes,
2021). On the other hand, Microsoft Phonetic Translation Editor Software has also been
annexed to transcribe regular English Orthography into Phonetic Transcriptions especially
English words with foreign Accents i.e Asian or Malaysian English Accents (Rodriguez &
Vann, 2021).
3.11 DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT TIMELINE
The following chart shall strategically illustrate the timeline of the entire research paper.
Diagram 5: Project Timeline
Description of Project Timeline
This research paper shall strategically be planned to be carried out for a total time
period of 16 weeks. Firstly, the first three weeks shall be chiefly allocated for the drafting of
the overall format of the proposal writing. Secondly, the fourth and fifth weeks shall be
wholly dedicated to choosing the specific research instrumentation which is essentially
needed to further extract the valuable data, during the instrument finalization. Thirdly, the
sixth and seventh weeks shall be fully utilized for the appropriate data and information
collection, where the semi-structured interviews and the orthographic transcribing process
shall be occurring. Fourthly, the valuable information would then be carefully analyzed and
empirically examined from a relevant focal viewpoint from weeks eight to ten onwards.
Fifthly, weeks eleven to thirteen shall be respectfully dedicated to handing in the three drafts
produced, to the respective supervisors for careful vigilant inspection. Sixthly, weeks
fourteen to sixteen shall be rightfully allocated to further complete the final alterations and to
rectify possibly unseen errors overlooked in the entire research paper. To summarise, any
postponements, delays, or hindrances caused by unprecedented natural disasters, during the
entire academic progress, shall be officially reported to the respective supervisors for their
immediate action.
3.12 SUMMARY
This study shall seek to incorporate two renowned conceptual frameworks of
Professors Noam Chomsky and Albert Bandura in dissecting the perceptions of students from
the course of English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology, in their attempts to learn to adopt the Malaysian English Accent (ME) in their
speech. The two theories of Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and Human Behaviour
Modelling shall be annexed side-by-side complementing each other during the results and
discussion chapters of this study as the theory proposed by Professor Noam Chomsky hinted
a more naturalistic approach to humans learning English language, whereas the precepts
emphasized by Professor Albert Bandura highlights the external factors of nurturing that
influences a way a speaker articulates his or her words in a sentence. Apart from that, gender-
based roles also chiefly sculpt the way a human articulates his or her word pronunciations,
based on the precepts of external factors such as emotions as well.
3.13 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this section of the study would seek to respectfully close the ethical
codes, conduct, population samplings, and specifications of qualitative data extraction
measures that will be rightfully exercised during the outputs of the results and discussion
sections of the research.
CHAPTER 4
RESEARCH RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
RESEARCH RESULTS
4.0 INTRODUCTION
This section of the research paper seeks to explain the valuable auditory results from
what has been employed in the semi-structured interview sessions. On that note, several
correlational samplings will be also revised to further justify their cohesion with both the
research objectives and questions raised. Moreover, the linguistic speech functions and
properties shall also be addressed in terms of their efficacy in relating to the three conceptual
frameworks that have been thoroughly explained in the previous chapters. Based on the semi-
structured interview questions conducted qualitatively, the research displays a tremendous
Standardized Variety of English Accents (SE) among the 10 candidates who are pursuing
their Majors in English Studies at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology. On that note, since the chosen candidates hailed of Chinese descent aged
between 18-21 years old, there has been a large amount of “Chinglish” (Chinese-English)
with prevalent uniformity in the results of this study. Nevertheless, it has also been reported
from the study findings of this research that, it is also a common scenario for those 10
candidates to replicate the Malaysian English Accent (ME) Accents of Malay, Tamil,
Cantonese, and Hakka when communicating in informal settings, especially in the Mesolect
and Basilect context settings in their daily lives. To summarize, there are numerous patterns
of word pronunciation and articulation of speech exhibited by the chosen candidates, that
shall be further explained in greater detail in this chapter.
4.1 ACCENT IDENTIFICATION
The commercial pattern of speech amongst the chosen candidates, displayed a vast
amount of accented speech, with the word pronunciation being largely influenced by
Mandarin or Chinese pronunciations. Interestingly, these differences are not only limited to
pronunciations but also within the utterances of punctuation marks as well. Nevertheless, the
pronunciation of each word will also be compared to the appropriate Standards of formal
English pronunciation which are British and American English on the Acrolect level. From a
deeper perspective, the exact words on where modification was executed by the chosen
candidates to employ the Malaysian English Accent (ME) would be displayed, in a
qualitative manner. Nevertheless, the dissections of modifications executed by the chosen
candidates would only be explained based on the properties of phonological differences as in
the sound, therefore it would not intermingle with the fields of grammar, syntax or
morphology.
REUY3S2 Project II 40
4.2 ATTRIBUTES OF MALAYSIAN-ENGLISH ACCENT (ME)

Based on the study findings of the semi-structured interviews, Malaysian English
words are pronounced with a modified tone compared to the formal Acrolect tonal inflections
as seen in British and American English variants. All 10 of the chosen candidates have
significantly preferred that countries such as Great Britain and the United States of America
display the best culture of English as it has been perceived the origins of where English is
both largely used and integrated into both formal and informal settings. Nevertheless,
modifications were conducted on the Malaysian English Accent (ME) with Chinese accented
word pronunciations in the semi-structured interview settings, due to the large influence of
the Mother tongue of the chosen candidates with this being the Mandarin language. However,
several debatable results were also conceived at the end of the semi-structured interview
sessions where not only the Imperial colonization of Great Britain throughout the 18 th-21st
century in Malaysia promoted the knowledge of English among the chosen candidates but it
is also due to other external factors as well. In this scenario, influences from the various
Entertainment industries such as from both the American and British mass media manifesting
in the mediums of television shows, Netflix dramas, situational comedies, and movies have
strongly sculpted various forms of perceptions in the Malaysian English Accent (ME) used in
colloquial settings.
4.3 JUSTIFICATION OF ACCENT COMPARISON

In this analysis of Discourse, the Pimsleur Language Assessment Method has been
applied as both British and English accents to be examined side-by-side in constant
comparison within the modification of another foreign English Accent in a qualitative
manner.(Granena & Yilmaz, 2019). On that note, it shall seek to fulfill both the research
objectives and questions in this research paper that revolves around, the types of English
word pronunciation and its characteristics prevalent among the chosen candidates from
Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology. Based on the Interview
Responses, 10 participants were recorded exercising various types of pronunciation using the
same phrase which is “Zebra Crossing” which is an outcome of the semi-controlled outcome
of the speech.
4.4 VALIDITY & RELIABILITY

Microsoft Phonetic Transcription Software Validity
The study has been executed with ethnical scientific practices to ensure valid data
results, to both minimize errors and placebo effect. In this analysis, the chosen participants
were earlier informed about the purpose of this research before the execution of the semi-
structured
interview session to reduce the frequency of errors, question misinterpretation, anxiety, and
stress. As a further initiative, the interview questions were raised in a repeated probing
pattern to receive relevant logical feedback that would be essential in successfully answering
the research objectives and questions. In this manner, 10 chosen participants are English
Major Students from Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology
(TARUMT). To ensure their privacy and confidentiality, their names were not mentioned in
this research paper. Nonetheless, 5 of them were male and 5 of them were female students.
Therefore, all of them, have been orally recorded utilizing the word “Zebra Crossing” during
the semi-structured interview, despite additional vocabulary prompts given to them but it was
not compulsory for them to use it. Henceforth, the results of this section of the study would
analyze the different pronunciation features of 1 same word made by 10 participants to ensure
valid pronunciation variations are marked to maximize phonetic analysis.
4.5 STUDY FINDINGS
TYPES OF REGULAR PHONETIC

N0. ACCENTS ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION PRONUNCIATION
ORTHOGRAPHY
1 BRITISH Zebra Crossing /ˈze. brə ˈkrɒs. ɪŋ/ Zeh-bruh-kro-suhng

ACCENT
MODIFIED
3 MALAYSIAN Zebra Crossing /ˈze. brə ˈkrɒs. ɪŋ/ Zeh-bruh-kro-suhng
ACCENT
Below here are the tabulated findings on phonological variations conducted from the
semi-structured interview settings conducted during the execution of this research.
Table 1.2 Evidence of Pronunciation Phonological Variation based on British IPA
Source: (Study Findings, 2022) British Accent

Pronunciation
According to Lindsey (2019), the British

pronunciation of words in the English language is
noticeably different, compared to the pronunciation of
American English. These differences may seem subtle. In this scenario, British English has
been annexed as the chief benchmark of this study, due to its pronunciation features being
taught to the chosen participants who have been exposed to the commonwealth education
system during their critical thinking learning period in school, in the English language.
Firstly, the British pronunciation, of the word “Zebra Crossing” marks the chief difference
of the voiced alveolar [z] at the front, where the sides of the front parts of the tongues are
raised, but the blade of the tongue is positioned low so that air may flow through it. (Brierly
& Heselwood, 2019).
Moreover, the phonetic transcription of [z] in the British Accent Pronunciation, is also
designated as belonging to the class of voiced fricatives. From a deeper perspective, [z] is
classified as alveolar fricatives as there is a significant amount of friction conceived at the
portion of the alveolar ridge. Secondly, the British pronunciation of the word “Zebra
Crossing” also witnesses the presence of a vowel which is generally produced with little
restriction of the airflow from the lungs outwards through the mouth or the nose itself.
(Wang, 2022). Interestingly, the pronunciation tone quality of this vowel [e] in “Zebra” may
differ from one speaker to another, depending on the shape of the individual’s tongue being
raised high or low inside the mouth. In this manner, the British pronunciation of the word
“Zebra” includes exertion of the front-mid vowel [e]. In Phonetic terminology, this vowel is
neither high nor low but just with a slightly lower tongue position. (Carley & Mees, 2021).
Thirdly, the authentic British articulation of the word “Zebra” is also identified with the
Phonetic transcription of [b] which can be classified as a stop. In this scenario, Stops can be
described as consonants in which the airstream is largely blocked in the oral cavity with a
precise duration of ten milliseconds. Nevertheless, stops in English Phonetics may be divided
into two chief categories, voiced and voiceless Stops. From the interview findings, the
Phonetic transcription [b] is a voiced bilabial stop where the flow of the airstream is largely
blocked at the front part of the mouth, which is subsequently followed by the complete
closure of both the upper and lower lips.
Fourthly, the British manner of pronouncing the word “Zebra” is identified with the
Phonetic transcription, being the Alveolar [r]. Generally, all Alveolars in the English
Language are pronounced with the blade of the tongue being raised in various ways towards
the portion of the Alveolar ridge (Fabricius, 2021). In this scenario, the Alveolar [r] extracted
from the British International Phonemic Chart, explains that the blade of the tongue is sharply
rolled curling backward behind the Alveolar ridge, which may contradict other alveolar forms
such as [l] when it is uttered, air largely flows through the central part of the mouth. Fifthly,
the next form of pronunciation that can be observed is the Phonetic transcription of the
unrounded vowel [ə] which is segmented as the schwa (Ashby, 2020). As described earlier,
the vowel sound in English may vary in pitch, contour, stress marker, and intonation
depending on the individual speaker, which may be quite longer or shorter in duration.
However, the schwa [ə] is a central-unrounded vowel that is usually articulated with the blade
of the tongue being placed in a neutral position between the stratospheres of high/low and
front/back. Surprisingly, the schwa [ə] is also used to denote unstressed vowels in the English
language.
Sixthly, the next Phonetic Transcription which is available in the British Phonetic
Transcription would be the Velar symbol [k]. In this manner, this particular class of word
sounds is produced by raising the back part of the tongue towards the soft palate or also
known as the Velum (Lim et al, 2022). In simpler terms, the initial sound of the word
“crossing” is commenced with the tongue being raised at the back part of the mouth.
Fascinatingly, the Phonetic transcription [k] can also be classified as a Voiceless Velar Stop,
which exhibits the complete closure at the Velum with the significant absence of glottal
vibration being felt at the throat (Ranzato, 2018). Therefore, the next Phonetic Transcription
is an Alveolar [r] as it appeared earlier in the phrase before. Seventhly, the next Phonetic
transcription worthy of note would be the open-back rounded vowel transcribed as, [ɒ].
Based on the International Phonetic Chart, the open-back rounded vowel or also known as the
low-back rounded vowel is uttered when the entire body of the tongue is located far below
the roof of the mouth, that is in the lower parts of the mouth. In terms of backwardness, a
certain portion of the tongue is positioned at the back part of the mouth, without creating any
significant constriction, that would be otherwise known as a Consonant. Conveniently, since
this vowel is rounded, it would articulate both the upper and lower lips to also be rounded,
rather than spread or relaxed (Mellesmoen, 2018).
Eighthly, the British Pronunciation of the word “Zebra Crossing” chiefly witnesses
the usage of the voiceless Alveolar [s]. As explained earlier, the sides at the front of the
tongue are raised, but however, the tip is lowered so that air flow is not restricted (Docherty,
2020). Ninthly, the next Phonetic Transcription that is present would be the high-front
unrounded vowel transcribed as [ɪ]. As described by Thakur (2020), the blade of the tongue
would be positioned high inside the mouth and shifted forwards toward the front part. On the
other hand, both the upper and lower lips are at ease in during the pronunciation of this
vowel, with only being slightly open, which is subsequently followed by the vibration of the
vocal cords inside the mouth. Fascinatingly, another anecdote that must be noted over here is
that the phenomenon of vowel backwardness being executed at the front, which would
enunciate the position of the tongue forward without any constriction, would be classified as
a consonant. However, it must also be noted that the archetypal phonetic transcription [ɪ]
might be present further back or near the front of principal cardinal vowels in English.
Tenthly, the final aspect of pronunciation of the word “Zebra Crossing” in the British
Phonemic Chart would be, the Phonetic symbol, [ŋ] which is classified as a Voiced Velar
Nasal which is also a Velar Stop. In this speech articulation, the Velar stops with the closure
of the Velum itself (Khal et al, 2019).
Another archetype worthy of note is that the method of pronouncing the Velar [ŋ] is
largely occlusive that in simple terminology can be described as being conceived by the
strong obstruction of airflow inside the human vocal tract. As the consonant is rather nasal in
its nature, the restricted airflow is redirected through the passive speech organ which is the
nose. Whereas, the back portion of the tongue is largely redirected to the dorsum or the soft
palate inside the mouth. Additionally, with [ŋ] being a central consonant, the flow of the
airstream is directed at the central body of the tongue rather than its sides (Jeong, 2021).
In terms of the airstream mechanism, it can be classified as a pulmonic egressive with

the Velum closed, which means, it is dominantly articulated by redirecting the airflow along
the components of the intercoastal muscles and diaphragm as in most sounds in English
(Trudgill, 2019). Henceforth, it can also be summarised that the British pronunciation of the
word “Zebra Crossing”, involves a significant number of processes such as unrounded
vowels. Schwa and other stress markers. Moreover, these Phonetic features are not only
present in the Phonological aspects of British English but also across all Indo-European
Languages as well but for different purposes. For inference, the schwa ə denotes gender
neutrality in the Italian Language (Kapranov, 2021).
Characteristics of Malaysian English Accent (ME)

Based on the study findings, 5 of the chosen participants retained the influence of the
British Accent word “Zebra Crossing” despite the significant influences of their Mother
tongue, Mandarin which has been their pre-dominant phonological influence, when it comes
to pronouncing English words, “Zebra-Crossing” is dominantly influenced from both the
British English and Malaysian Prosodic features of stress and intonation as well. In this
scenario, 5 of the chosen participants were chiefly influenced by the British Pronunciation of
the word, “Zebra Crossing”, due to the suprasegmental features of this trait of pronunciation
and spelling order that was taught to them during the critical learning period of their exposure
towards the English language at National Schools. Based on the Interview findings and
Phonetic Transcriptions, the metrical structure of how the word is pronounced by the 5
participants is chiefly influenced by characteristics of spelling, and pronunciation which are
both learned and influenced during their childhood period in Malaysian National School
Education Systems. To recapitulate, this particular form of data sampling also beautifully
correlates to the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) Theory developed by Professor Noam
Chomsky as explained earlier in Chapter 3 (Sihombing, 2022)
Therefore, 5 of the chosen participants were largely influenced by the natural form of
speech that was imbedded in their Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which complements
the fact that Human Language is originally learned instinctively by what is taught during the
critical-learning period. Henceforth, this is also the foreground foundation on why 5 of the
chosen respondents conformed to the British pronunciation of the English Accent since they
were influenced by the British Influences in the English Language Subjects, taught to them in
the Malaysian Secondary Schools they attended, that also attests to the fact that Malaysia is a
Commonwealth country being once colonized with Indo-European features in English
Subjects (Ng & Cavallaro, 2019).
TYPES OF REGULAR PHONETIC

N0. ACCENTS ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION PRONUNCIATION
ORTHOGRAPHY
1 AMERICAN Zebra Crossing | ˈziː.brə ˈkrɒs.ɪŋ | Zee-bruh-kraa-suhng

ACCENT
3 MALAYSIAN Zebra Crossing | ˈziy.brə ˈkrɔs.iŋ | Ziy-bruh-kraa-suhng

ACCENT
Table 1.3 Evidence of American Pronunciation Phonological Variation based on British IPA
Source: (Study Findings, 2022)
American English Pronunciation
According to (), the American pronunciation

of words in the English language is contrastingly
different, compared to the pronunciation of British English. These differences may seem
elusively understated. In this manner, although British English has been regarded as the chief
benchmark of this study, features of American English Accent pronunciation are also equally
considered due to chosen participants who have been largely exposed to the mass media input
from the common manifestations of media i.e., television shows, musical lyrics composition
and also undeniably from the social media as well, that they have received during their
Higher-Tertiary Institution, at TARUMT. It is highly imperative to consider that the
characteristics of the American English Accent adopted by the chosen participants are only
physically replicated after their critical thinking learning period in school, which is during
their young-adult stage.
Firstly, the American pronunciation, of the word “Zebra Crossing” is similar akin to
the voiced alveolar [z] of the British English Accent at the front, where the sides of the front
parts of the tongues are raised, but the blade of the tongue is positioned low so that air may
flow through it. (Brierly & Heselwood, 2019).
Moreover, the phonetic transcription of [z] in the American Accent

Pronunciation, is also designated as belonging to the class of voiced fricatives. From a deeper
perspective, [z] is classified as alveolar fricatives as there is a significant amount of friction
conceived at the portion of the alveolar ridge, in a similar likeness to the British Accent.
Secondly, the American pronunciation of the word “Zebra Crossing” also witnesses the
presence of a closed-unrounded vowel [i] which is generally produced with the position of
the tongue being located at the roof of the mouth without creating any form of constriction
that would otherwise be classified as a consonant. Therefore, it is also classified as an
unrounded vowel that does not curve the positions of both the upper and lower lips into
rounding thus making it to be an unrounded vowel. (Flexner & Kerr, 2021). Interestingly, the
American pronunciation tone quality of this vowel [i] in “Zebra” may differ from one
speaker to another, depending on the shape of the individual’s tongue being raised high or
low inside the mouth. In this manner, the American pronunciation of the word “Zebra” may
include an elongation of the closed-unrounded vowel [i] which may contribute to an
additional length of sound in the long -e sound in American English. In Phonetic
terminology, this vowel may be uttered with an additional length, and may not be normally
pronounced as a pure vowel that may be categorized as a slight diphthong. (Carley & Mees,
2021). Thirdly, the contrasting American articulation of the word “Zebra” is also identified
with the Phonetic transcription of [b] which can be classified as a stop. In similar oral
resemblance to the British Accent, Stops can be described as consonants in which the
airstream is largely blocked in the oral cavity with a precise duration of ten milliseconds.
However, as mentioned previously, stops in English Phonetics may be divided into two chief
categories, voiced and voiceless Stops. From the interview findings, the Phonetic
transcription [b] is a voiced bilabial stop where the flow of the airstream is largely blocked at
the front part of the mouth, which is subsequently followed by the complete closure of both
the upper and lower lips.
Fourthly, the American style of pronouncing the word “Zebra” is identified with the
Phonetic transcription, being the Alveolar [r]. Hailing from the phonetic resemblance to
British English, all Alveolars in the American English Language are also pronounced with
the blade of the tongue being raised in various ways towards the portion of the Alveolar ridge
(Clopper & Dossey, 2020). In this scenario, the American Alveolar [r] is identical to the
British International Phonemic Chart, which explains that the blade of the tongue is sharply
rolled curling backward behind the Alveolar ridge, which may contradict other alveolar forms
such as [l] when it is uttered, air largely flows through the central part of the mouth. Fifthly,
the next form of pronunciation that can be observed is the Phonetic transcription of the
unrounded vowel [ə] which is segmented as the schwa (Livingstone & Russo, 2018). As
described earlier, the vowel sound even in American English may vary in its pitch, contour,
stress marker, and intonation depending on the individual speaker, which may be quite longer
or shorter in duration. However, the schwa [ə] is a central-unrounded vowel that is usually
articulated with the blade of the tongue being placed in a neutral position between the
stratospheres of high/low and front/back. Interestingly, the schwa [ə] is also used to denote
unstressed vowels in the American English language.
Sixthly, the next Phonetic Transcription which is available in American English

Phonetic Transcription would be the Velar symbol [k]. Much like the British Accent, this
particular class of word sounds is produced by raising the back part of the tongue towards the
soft palate or also known as the Velum (Kim,2019). As mentioned earlier, the initial sound of
the word “crossing” is commenced with the tongue being raised at the back part of the
mouth. A fascinating resemblance to the British Accent is that the American Phonetic
transcription [k] can also be classified as a Voiceless Velar Stop, which exhibits the complete
closure at the Velum with the significant absence of glottal vibration being felt at the throat
(Bailey & Thomas, 2021). Therefore, the next Phonetic Transcription is an Alveolar [r] as it
appeared earlier in the phrase before. Seventhly, the next Phonetic transcription worthy of
note would be the open-back rounded vowel transcribed as, [ɒ]. Based on the International
Phonetic Chart, the American open-back rounded vowel or also known as the low-back
rounded vowel is uttered when the entire body of the tongue is located far below the roof of
the mouth, that is in the lower parts of the mouth. In terms of backwardness, a certain portion
of the tongue is positioned at the back part of the mouth, without creating any significant
constriction, that
would be otherwise known as a Consonant. Conveniently, since this vowel is

rounded, it would articulate both of the upper and lower lips to also be rounded, rather than
spread or relaxed as previously explained in the British Accent (Mellesmoen, 2018).
Eighthly, the American Pronunciation of the word “Zebra Crossing” also chiefly
witnesses the usage of the voiceless Alveolar [s]. Being akin to the British Accent, the sides
at the front of the tongue are raised, but however, the tip is lowered so that air flow is not
restricted (Burdin & Tyler 2018). Ninthly, the next Phonetic Transcription that is present
would be the high-front unrounded vowel transcribed as [ɪ]. As described by Labov (2021),
the blade of the tongue would be positioned high inside the mouth and shifted forwards
toward the front part. On the other hand, both the upper and lower lips are at ease in during
the pronunciation of this vowel, with only being slightly open, which is subsequently
followed by the vibration of the vocal cords inside the mouth, in the American Accent.
Surprisingly another narrative that must be noted over here is that the phenomenon of vowel
backwardness of the American Accent being executed at the front, that would enunciate the
position of the tongue forward without any constriction, would be classified as a consonant,
similar to the British Accent. However, it must also be noted that the archetypal phonetic
transcription [ɪ] might be present further back or near the front of principal cardinal vowels in
general English itself. Tenthly, the final aspect of pronunciation of the word “Zebra
Crossing” in the American English Accent would be, the Phonetic symbol, [ŋ] which is
classified as a Voiced Velar Nasal which is also a Velar Stop. In this speech articulation, the
Velar stops with the closure of the Velum itself (Rickford, 2021).
Another archetype worthy of note is that the American method of pronouncing the
Velar [ŋ] is strikingly similar to the British Accent. As mentioned earlier, the occlusive that
in simple terminology can be described as being conceived by the strong obstruction of
airflow inside the human vocal tract. As the consonant is rather nasal in its nature, the
restricted airflow is redirected through the passive speech organ which is the nose. Whereas,
the back portion of the tongue is largely redirected to the dorsum or the soft palate inside the
mouth. Additionally, with [ŋ] being a central consonant, the flow of the airstream is directed
at the central body of the tongue rather than its sides (Bent & Holt, 2018).
In terms of Air Mechanism, the American English Accent of the word “Zebra
Crossing” lacks the usage of the lingual ingressive feature, which is also known as velaric
egressive. In simple terms, the phenomenon of exotic sound features such as clicks is largely
absent in the American English Accent. Nonetheless, as in all human languages, American
English Accent Pronunciation includes the Pulmonic egressive sound feature which as
explained previously, is produced by the air stream flow via the lungs, ribs, and diaphragm
mostly containing the vowels.
Characteristics of Malaysian English (ME)
Based on the study findings, 5 of the chosen participants have adopted the use of the
American English Accent word “Zebra Crossing” despite the significant influences of
British English Education which took place during their critical learning period. Based on the
Interview findings and Phonetic Transcriptions, the metrical structure of how the word is
pronounced by the 5 participants is chiefly influenced by characteristics of spelling, and
pronunciation which are both learned and influenced during their exposure to both peer and
mass media influences that enables them to successfully replicate the American English
Accent. To recapitulate, this particular form of data sampling also beautifully correlates to the
Human Behaviour Modelling Theory developed by the late Professor Albert Bandura as
explained earlier in Chapter 3, that all human beings mentally rehearse and replicate patterns
of human behavior that is not only merely limited to the feelings of emotions and other
psychological aspects, but the key anecdote of speech patterns is also assimilated by one
group to another for a successful physical imitation.
Study reports indicated that 5 of the chosen participants have not only been able to
adapt to the American Accent but to creatively assimilate with local Malaysian language
features as well. This can be proven in the elongated tone pronunciation of the long-I sound
in the word “Zebra Crossing” American variant that was chiefly influenced by their mother
tongue, Mandarin which has been their pre-dominant phonological influence, when it comes
to pronouncing English words. It is essential to consider the fact that since the mother tongue
of the chosen participants was Mandarin being a tonal language where each word is
pronounced with a different intonation and pitch contour. Therefore, it can be theorized that
the adoption of the American English Accent of the word “Zebra Crossing” has been
creatively integrated with the tonal influence of their mother tongue, which is Mandarin.
Moreover, the ability to
assimilate between accents in a language itself is a unique feature in a human’s speech

organ that may be technically termed “The Chameleon Effect in Human Speech”. The speech
pattern of “The Chameleon Effect” is largely derived from the ability to mimic and assimilate
other accents into an individual’s locale contextual setting, is executed both consciously and
subconsciously in an attempt to imitate foreign speech patterns, oral cues, body language
gestures, and tone of voice to blend in the surrounding group of a particular environment to
be accepted among close peers and acquaintances, is psychologically similar akin to the cold-
blooded reptile, called Chamaeleonidae or commonly known as Chameleon, which regulates
its outer skin pigmentation to naturally blend into its surroundings. As mentioned by ( )
Broca’s area in the Human brain is largely dedicated to processing outputs of human word
pronunciation in assimilating other foreign forms of human behavior which includes accents.
To summarise, 5 of the chosen participants were largely influenced by the externally

adopted form of speech that was not originally imbedded in their Language Acquisition
Device (LAD) the American English Accent, which beautifully correlates with the fact that
Human Language is not only learned instinctively by not being limited to what is taught
during the critical-learning period. But on being influenced by other external elements as
well. Henceforth, this is also the foreground foundation on why 5 of the chosen respondents
conformed to the American pronunciation of the English Accent was because they were
influenced by the American Mass Media and Physical Peer Influences during their linguistic
journey in learning English courses, taught to them in the Higher-Tertiary Learning
Institutions they have attended after the critical learning stage being young adults, also attests
to the fact that although Malaysia may be a Commonwealth country being once colonized
with influences of Great Britain, foreign features of American Accent may be assimilated as
well. (Smitherman, 2019)
4.6 SUMMARY
This section of the results has displayed the chief phonological pronunciation
differences between the influence of the British English Accent and the externally adopted
American English Accent. In this method, the first research question and its objective has
been successfully answered, which are keen on identifying the different types of English
pronunciations and their prevalent characteristics, among English Major Students aged
between 18-21 at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology
(TARUMT).
Therefore, this section of the results has displayed the chief phonological pronunciation
differences between the influence of the British English Accent and the externally adopted
American English Accent. Based on the transcriptional results, 5 of the chosen participants
have been recorded using the British English Accent whereas the other 5 participants have
not only adopted the American English Accent but also assimilated with the locale influences
of their mother tongue which is dominantly Mandarin. Therefore, this also coincides with the
theory of “The Chameleon Effect” where human beings learn to adopt and replicate other
English Accents. To encapsulate, the natural inhibition of the British Accent correlates back
to Professor Noam Chomsky’s Theory of (LAD) Language Acquisition Device, where
prosodic elements of speech are a naturally formed input whereas the nurture behavior
modeling seeks to complement the late Professor Albert Bandura’s Theory that human beings
learn from one another to blend in their environments by both peer and media influences.
4.7 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this results section of the study would like to respectfully close the
empirical results and the specifications of transcribed phonetic data from the correlational
populational samplings. Nevertheless, qualitative analysis will be explained elaborately in the
discussions section of this study.
4.8 RESULTS OF SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW
Questions Participant response (P)
2 P1-P3 British and American English

Accents
P4-P6 Chinese English Accents

5
6
Chinglish-Manglish English
P7-P8
Accents
7
8
P9-P10 Locally educated and exposed to
9
foreign media
10
Diagram 5: Participant’s Response
The Diagram above illustrates the data findings and the responses of the participants
on their perception of the Malaysian English Accent (SE). Based on the researcher’s
observation, participants chiefly preferred the use of foreign accents i.e American & British
English Accents compared to the Malaysian English Accent (SE) in formal settings, during
the execution of the semi-structured interview.
Based on the Interview questions, the chosen participants responded with diverse
viewpoints concerning their perception of the Characteristics of Malaysian English accents.
In this Thematic Dialogue Analysis, responses that are similar feedback for different
questions, from each participant, shall be coined under a single umbrella for ease of
qualitative analysis. Nevertheless, several ethical considerations were exercised in the
transcription of the interview sessions, in which the names of each chosen participant were
maintained as anonymous to prevent their identity from being academically published
without their consent.
Semi-structured Interview Validity
The discussion section of the study has been executed with ethical considerations to
ensure that valid data has been analyzed, to minimize preconceived biases. In this
methodology, the chosen participants have been informed earlier concerning the semi-
structured interview setting, and the questions were also reprobated several times during the
execution of the interview to maximize relevant data extraction. Nevertheless, a crucial
output that must be noted is that the discussion section only displays relevant transcription of
participants’ responses that would be deemed valid to successfully answer the second
research question and its objective. Therefore, only the relevant transcription of the
participants was analyzed from the semi-structured interview. Henceforth, vague responses
that were not related to answering the research objectives and questions were omitted from
this analysis in adherence to the American Psychological Association’s (APA 2022)
Standards.
4.9.1 Thematic Dialogue Analysis 1: British and American English Accents
P1: Which country best represents the culture of English? Well, I would say England,
because it is where the English Language originated. Because the other American English,
Australian English and other English stand out from the British English. For me, I feel that
both Accents was good for me in excelling in my Oral test for my IELTS.
P2: Personally, I feel that the American English is a bit more relatable for me,
because I think I watch more American TV series and show. So definitely I’m exposed to
American English more. First it is Bing Bang Theory, a TV show with 12 seasons. Simply I
think that American English is easier for me and my friends to understand and speak
compared to others.
P3: I feel that the United Kingdom best represents the Culture of English, as most of
our books, materials and assignments are from there. Furthermore, I’ve received my A-
Levels Education from Cambridge Syllabus at TARUMT as well. I’m not so sure about the
rest but I feel that British Accent is what I feel its professional for me to speak in as its more
influential in my law studies.
4.9.2 Interview Questions Raised:

1. Which Country best represents the Culture of English? Why?
2. Which Accent is more influential for you in developing your overall English
proficiency? Why?
3. Which Accent is easier for Malaysian College Students to speak? Why?
4.9.3 Discussion
Based on the received interview responses, Participant 1 has provided feedback that
England displays the pinnacle benchmark of English Culture, due to that Language originated
from that region. Moreover, this also alludes to the difference of pitches and stress markers
from British English that marks its chief distinct quality from other English Accents such as
the American Accent. This nature complements the Language Acquisition Theory Provided
by Professor Noam Chomsky, that human beings are influenced by a particular unformed
pattern of speech to what they are taught naturally, especially when Participant 1 commented
that annexing the knowledge and influences of the British English
The accent was beneficial in his or her respective attempts during their Preliminary
Pre-University Testing Programs such as A-Levels. Besides that, Participant 3 also further
complements that the British English Accent is dominantly preferred over the American
English Accent due to its academic requirement in law studies being deemed as professional.
Nevertheless, Participant 2 was the only candidate who exhibits a contrary response in that, it
was the American English Accent that starkly encompasses the mass influence being the
exposure to American-Situational Comedy Programs such as The Big Bang Theory when the
surrounding peers also communicate via the American English Accent which beautifully
complements the Human Behaviour Modelling Theory of Professor Albert Bandura where
human beings learn from each other not only aspects of behavior but also patterns of speech.
4.9.4 Thematic Dialogue Analysis I1: Chinese English Accents
P4: Well in Malaysia, there are many Malaysian Accents influenced by each
community’s mother tongue such as Chinglish, Tanglish, Hokkinglish, Cantonglish, and
Manglish words themselves! But in terms of which specific Malaysian Accent strengthens the
use of English among College students is quite too many. But for me, I feel that the Chinese
English Accent with its Chinglish vocabulary is what has enabled me to improve my oral
speaking abilities among my college friends. However, when I’m researching materials for
my assignments, there are no rooms for Malaysian English Accents so I have to only rely on
either British or American English Accents in Academic Videos from YouTube.
P5: I think that this literally depends on your environment, basically since we are all
Malaysians, all forms of Malaysian Accents such as Malay, Chinese and Indians are equally
used by all Malaysian College Students. But since I grew in a closed Chinese Environment,
the Chinese English Accent is what has enabled me to not only improve-lah, but to also
translate back to my mother tongue Mandarin when learning English. But since I studied in
Sekolah Kebangsaan type of School, I was influenced by British Vocabulary.
P6: I cannot confirm say that one particular English Accent is the dominant one in
Malaysia-lah, because there are a lot of Malaysian English Accents being used by College
Students. But since my friends and I are Chinese, we tend to use Chinese, Hokkien and
Cantonese English Accents with some Mandarin influences among my college friends in
TARUMT at least I can say. Hmm… I think there are less options for me to choose from
when seeking reference for research articles-lah.

4. Which Malaysian English Accent (ME) dominates in Malaysia and thus strengthens
the power of English as a Second Language among Malaysian College Students?
5. Which Malaysian English Accent (ME) is more accessible for you to find authentic
materials for your assignments?
4.9.6 Discussion
Responses from the Semi-Structured interview speech transcription provide valid

evidence that participants agree that there is no particular Malaysian English Accent (ME)
that is being used dominantly by a single ethnic group among Malaysian College Students in
Malaysia, with respect and adherence towards other existing Malaysian English (ME)
Accents, with their respective vocabulary words forms such as Chinglish, Tanglish, and even
Manglish. On the other hand, Participants have agreed that the Chinese English Accent has
enabled them to improve their oral fluency and general proficiency in the English Language.
As mentioned by Professor Noam Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD) Theory,
the human brain is hardwired to learn a new language such as English via the repeated
correlation and even mental translation of what has been naturally inputted in L1 (Language
1) which in this scenario, occurs to be the mother tongue of the chosen Participants that is
respectfully classified as the Mandarin Language. Nonetheless, the lack of Generalised
Malaysian Accent (ME) or Manglish vocabulary in general as authentic materials for
academic referencing, chiefly forces the chosen participants to advocate for the British or
American English Accents in terms of seeking primary sources of articles in English Studies.
4.9.7 Thematic Dialogue Analysis II1: Chinglish-Manglish English Accents
P7: I think for diversity right I think the Manglish or Malaysian English Accent is
what I can best relate to and understand when reading Kampung Boy Lat-Comics for
academic critique purposes. Well, for Jobs, I do speak in the Chinese English Accent with
Chinglish words when I am talking to my friends. But then I resort to the American English
Accent whenever I’m talking to customers on call.
P8: Oh, I still use the British Vocabulary whenever I’m searching for authentic
materials except for Manglish-Chinglish Accents Articles whenever I need to include in my
academic writing. So, if there are no Chinglish-Manglish references, I must either use the
British or American Vocabulary and their accents-lah. Since I work part-time as an Anime
subtitle inserter, I tend to use the spelling of American English words. But I do use the
Chinese English Accent, whenever I am on my break time as it helps me to bond with my
peers.

6. Which Malaysian English Accent (ME) is more accessible in terms of diversity and
authentic materials?
7. How does a job occupation influence the way you speak in the Malaysian English
Accent (ME)?
4.9.9 Discussion
Empirical Narrative accounts from the next part of the Semi-structured interview
session display tremendous psychological correlations concerning the pre-existing principles
of Language Acquisition Theory, proposed by Professor Noam Chomsky. Participant 7 has
provided a profound statement concerning the accessible terms in the diversity of authentic
materials. In this scenario, the renowned graphical edutainment novel series titled Kampung
Boy authored by Lat seems to be the favourable choice in the field of academic critique of
materials. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that both Participants 7 and 8 have attested to the
usage of not only American English Accent in their workplace career but also the annexation
of American English spelling was also integrated within the Entertainment Industry as well
when Participant 8 denoted the fact that the insertion of American English Subtitles instead of
British English subtitles in the Japanese 2D-Graphical Entertainment Programs called Anime.
Nonetheless, both Participants were recorded to dominantly prefer the use of Chinese English
Accents accompanied by Chinglish words with their close acquaintances.
4.9.10 Thematic Analysis IV: Local and Foreign Exposure
P9: Well, my exposure towards English starts from the Sekolah Kebangsaan
environment with Malaysian Students where the emphasis was on British Accent and
vocabulary influence. But then, I learned new ways of pronunciation as I entered TARUMT
when I speak with my Chinese friends who also speak in American Accent. We also learned
unique ways of stressing parts by watching American TV shows like the Big Bang Theory via
Netflix and YouTube Shorts. So, my parents always speak to me in Cantonese, but I tend to
mix in between Mandarin and Hokkien whenever I speak with them.
P10: Personally, my experience with the English language was influenced by Asiatic
influences. Since I grew up in a Chinese-Hokkien family, my parents would speak only
Mandarin and Hokkien at home. So, I also have to speak with my parents in Mandarin
Language and with my relatives Hokkien-lah. But after studying in Sekolah Kebangsaan, I
also learned the British English spelling in words. But in my Discourse Analysis Class at
TARUMT, I learned more about American Accent from the famous TV show called Friends,
in Netflix when analysing Maxim Flouting.
8. How was your exposure towards the English Language?

9. What is the pre-dominant Language use of Malaysian Parents at home?
10. What Language do your own parents speak at home?
4.9.12 Discussion
The Final Narrative Account of this section of the study chiefly encompasses the state
of Asiatic influences which largely sculptured the initial linguistic contact and exposure to
the English language from their critical learning period. In this contextual setting, Participants
agreed that their exposure to the English language was largely influenced by British English
due to their education in National Schools in Malaysia. Moreover, their own pre-dominant
usage of Language was also largely responsible for their perception of the English language
in the specific use of its dichotomy. As evidenced above, the use of
Mandarin-Hokkien Languages by the parents, family members, and relatives of each

Participant tend to correlate with the statement that the heavy exotic Asiatic influences of
Language such as Mandarin, Hokkien, and Cantonese being the chief forms of speech among
the family members and friends among the chosen Participants, inclines with the fact that
they would perceive the English Language via their pre-dominant Asiatic Language
influences in their daily formal and informal situational settings. Nonetheless, a valid
inference must be noted that despite the predominant usage of Mandarin, Cantonese, and
Hokkien influences shaping the Participants' view on the English Language as a whole
linguistic entity, mass exposure to modern-day media manifesting in the forms of the
renowned Entertainment industry such as Netflix and YouTube programs such as the Big
Bang Theory sharply inclines the need to adapt towards the American English Accent when
talking among their peers. Moreover, as evidenced in the transcription above, the academic
needs of Higher-Tertiary Education at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &
Technology also indirectly shape the needs for English Major Students to analyze speech
properties of the American English Accent when Participant 9 provides an account that the
course of Discourse Analysis witnesses the emphasis on analyzing speech features from the
renowned American Television series, titled Friends from Netflix. To summarise, it can be
inferred that the academic requirements of Higher-Tertiary Education also meanderingly
influence the requirements of English Major Students at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of
Management & Technology to adapt to the American English Accent.
4.12 SUMMARY
This section of the study would like to summarise that, exposure to the English
Language at a young age would largely affect the LAD input of the chosen participants,
especially being influenced by the Malaysian English Accent (ME) accompanied by the chief
influence of British English Accent usage at Malaysian National Schools prior to their accent
assimilation and modification towards the American English Accent at Higher-Tertiary
Education.
4.13 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this section of the study has yielded tremendous data results that were
largely successful in answering the second research question and its objective being, on what
are the perceptions and factors of Malaysian University Students in learning to adopt the
Malaysian English Accent (ME), being largely comprised of both mother tongue influence
and peer exposure as well.
4.14 ANALYSIS OF THEMATIC RESPONSES

The following Diagram represents major themes of the perceptions of chosen
participants.
Intolerance Nature of LAD

towards new Characteristics
Influences
THEMES OF
RESPONSES
Influence of
Perceptions of Mass Media &
Stereotypes peer exposure
Diagram 6: Analysis of Linguo-Psychological Thematic Response
The Diagram above depicts the qualitative data findings concerning the perception of
chosen participants towards the Malaysian English Accent (SE). Based on the results of the
semi-structured interview session, four major themes were analyzed, which revolves around,
the Nature of LAD (Language Acquisition Device) and its characteristics, the influence of
Mass Media and Peer Exposure, the Perceptions of Stereotypes, and lastly, the Intolerance
towards New Influences in their view towards the Malaysian English Accent in this study.

Validity of Thematic Division in Linguo-Psychological Analysis
This particular section of the study has annexed a division of Thematic Analysis to
correlate the relationship between the fields of Linguistics and Psychology. As mentioned by
(), a Thematic analysis is a chief methodology dominantly preferred by researchers in terms
of explaining colossal segments of qualitative data, which is commonly applied to a
prescribed set number of all three primary, secondary and tertiary data which comprises the
following but not strictly limited to, texts, interview recordings, videos, audios formal and
informal transcripts. In this analysis, the data is examined with valid inspections to derive
common themes, topics, ideas, or patterns that may appear repeatedly. Therefore, this
research has included various approaches to execute the thematic analysis which is usually
concocted via a six-step process: familiarization, coding, generating themes, reviewing
themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up the themes. In this manner, adhering to
this six-step process suggested by the American Psychological Association (APA) may
contribute to avoiding confirmation bias in terms of analysis formulation. As a valid
inference, this six-step process was originally developed for Psychological Research by
Psychologists Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke that was originally adopted from the late
Canadian Professor, Albert Bandura’s Human Behaviour Modelling Theory. However, a
Thematic analysis can not only be applicable in Psychological Research but may be adapted
to a diverse set of empirical studies in Higher-Tertiary Institutions. To encapsulate, a
deductive latent approach was used when it comes to analyzing interview responses with
certain preconceived themes that are based on current existing theoretical knowledge, to
minimize the palliative samplings in this research.
American Linguistics
Expert
Prof. Noam Chomsky
(1928-present)
Diagram 7: Professor Noam Chomsky’s Theory

4.15.1 Theme I: Nature of LAD Characteristics by Professor Noam Chomsky
Stages of Language Development (Pre-linguistic and Symbolic Language Change from

Participants during the Critical Learning period).
Based on the provisional analysis from the semi-structured interview settings,

effective language development is extremely essential for an early child’s ability to orally
communicate in both formal and informal settings. In this manner, being aware of each phase
of language development enables a human to be mentally capable of identifying vocabulary
forms in their linguistic development (Heather, 2020). It is highly imperative to comprehend
that, the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) in all humans, linguistically processes in these
following stages. Firstly, during the Pre-Linguistic Stage, which occurs between zero-six
months, all chosen participants were exposed to their mother tongue Mandarin where they
orally produced cooing sounds accompanied by nasal murmuring as their vocal tracts
develop. It is during this period, that they develop basic tonal comprehension within their
mother tongue Mandarin accompanied by facial expressions and body language gestures.
Secondly, during their Holophrastic Stage, all chosen participants in this study, which occurs
between nine-eighteen months, have developed minimal word comprehension to utter basic
words in Mandarin such as Ah ma and Papa.
During this period, all chosen participants were identified using the same word which
carries different meanings in the Mandarin language such as huā which may mean, flower or
snowflake beautiful girl puppy, or fireworks in the Mandarin language, without realizing its
meaning due to their prior mental immaturity. To summarise, all chosen participants were
chiefly exposed to the Mandarin language being their mother tongue, during the initial stages
of their critical period, absorbed by their own Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
The Telegraphic Stage when all of the chosen participants in this study occur between
twenty-four-thirty months is where the speech organs develop sufficient muscle power and
basic speech proficiency to communicate. Interestingly it is during this stage that all chosen
participants were first exposed to the English language from their parents and close family
members (Mulyani, 2019). Although the correct form of grammar is largely absent in their
vocabularies, all chosen participants were reported to utter basic phrases in the English
language such as, “My Car is an on Table” and “My Doll now is my hand”. Interestingly, it
is during the Telegraphic stage that all human beings develop the mental capacity to
comprehend basic instructions such as the composition of two-part orders from their parents.
As evidenced by all chosen participants, they have reported comprehending basic instructions
from their parents for the first time in the English language at three-four years old with
phrases such as “Go back to sleep” “Go and sit on the chair” Go to your table” and “Go get
your books”.
The Effects of Bilingual Education, Immersion, and Multicultural Education from

Participants at the Critical Learning Period
As evidenced by Bialystok (2018), it is during the Multi-Modal Stage that all human
beings thirty months and beyond are functionally capable of constructing increasingly
complex sentences to communicate their ideas effectively. In that regard, it is essential to
comprehend that all chosen participants in this study, received their English Education in
Bilingual Learning Environments which are Malaysian National Schools (Sekolah
Kebangsaan). Moreover, they were largely influenced by the British Manner of Pronouncing
certain keywords that were taught to them in their education practicum as evidenced by the
phrase “Zebra Crossing”. Besides that, immersion in multicultural Malaysian educational
institutions at a young age especially during the critical learning stage has enabled all chosen
participants to develop the required basic
subskills such as phonology, morphology, and syntax that are largely influenced by the
British English Accent. Moreover, all chosen participants were observed to comprehend basic
phrases of Manglish elements such as “can lah” and “why leh?” “aiyoh”, during the Multi-
Modal Stage, due to the diverse cultural interactions that they have experienced in their
critical-learning period. Moreover, it is crucial to understand that, although all of the chosen
participants were Chinese, they were also exposed to the communication styles of other races
as well being largely comprised of Malays and Indian races respectively, which further
complements their existing knowledge of being influenced with British Accent and its
Vocabulary.
This effect of Bilingual Education, beautifully correlates back to Professor Noam

Chomsky’s Theory of Language Acquisition Devices that when Grammatical Competence is
formally achieved via the Formal Language Input that has been learned by the Language
Acquisition Device, all aspects of the English Language that the chosen participants have
been exposed to is further complemented back to their existing knowledge of Linguistic
processing skills, which enables the chosen participants to comprehend British Accents and
Vocabulary accompanied with the oral communication styles of other races in National
Secondary Schools in the Malaysian Contextual Setting during their critical learning period.
The Late Canadian

Psychologist
Prof. Albert Bandura
(1925-2021)
Diagram 8:Late Professor Albert Bandura’s Theory I
4.15.2 Theme II: Influences of Mass Media Exposure (Late Professor Albert Bandura)
The Effects of Peer Influences and the Environmental Cultural Norms on Language
Development from Participants
Peer influences are a psychological driving factor accompanied by environmental

influences and behavioral cultural norms that tend to linguistically affect an individual’s
general language development process. Based on the provisional results, all chosen
participants have attested to the statement that one of the chief reasons they have decided not
only to adopt the American English Accent but also to assimilate it with local influences of
their mother tongue due to the changes in their friendship circle being a frequent occurrence
from their academic journey within National Primary Schools to their Higher-Tertiary
Learning Institutions studying at TARUMT. As mentioned by Bandura (2021), human beings
psychologically receive various inputs from their surroundings this includes but is not limited
to the acquisition of new words, assimilation towards new accents, development of new
pronunciation skills, and being influenced by peers themselves in a classroom in Higher-
Learning Tertiary Institutions. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that, in 21 st-century
settings, human beings are not only limited to mentally remembering, and rehearsing a
behavioral action that is encountered physically but also to what medium and duration their
speech organs have been exposed to foreign mass media. Interview responses attest that all of
the chosen participants have not only
managed to adopt the American English Accent via physical peer influences, but to the
exposure to mass media originating from the American Entertainment Industry as well. For
inference, all chosen participants have been exposed to pronunciation, stress, tone, intonation,
and pitch contour towards American-Situational Comedy Series such as “Friends” and “The
Big Bang Theory as Well”. To further complement this statement, chosen participants have
also confirmed that they have been watching the particular series titled “The Big Bang
Theory” and “Friends” for both entertainment and educational purposes that enabled them to
mimic the American English Accent. This beautifully correlates back to the Human
Behaviour Modelling Theory proposed by the late Professor Albert Bandura that in extended
periods, human beings may physically replicate those behavioral speech patterns in specific
societal settings.
Historical and Societal Influences of English Language Acquisition among the Chosen
Participants
Historically, Malaysia is a Commonwealth Country that was once colonized by Great

Britain, which clearly explains the chief reason why Malaysian National Educational Schools
emphasize not only the influence of the British way of pronunciation but also terms of
spelling and vocabulary in their reading and writing as well. Nevertheless, all chosen
participants were only largely influenced by the British accent and thus did not naturally
acquire the authentic British accent during their critical-learning stage in childhood, by living
or studying abroad in countries where English is used as the First Official Language such as
in Great Britain, Wales or England. Therefore, all chosen participants confirm that the
influence of the Malaysian English Accent, not only varies from one race to another, but also
from one locality to another. As an inference, all chosen participants were largely exposed to
their mother tongue Mandarin being their first language, before being taught basic English by
their parents, followed by formal English taught to them at National Schools, and finally,
adoption of the American English Accent at Higher-Tertiary Institutions. Therefore, Based,
on this narrative, this phenomenon may be classified as a Linguistic-Diasporic Change where
human beings adopt and assimilate functional features within the same language that is
English, based on what they have been taught at the critical stage and also to what they have
been exposed to during their age as a young adult as well. During the semi-structured
interview session all
chosen participants agreed that adopting the American accent has enabled them to better
assimilate or in simple terms to fit in within a particular friendship circle, which granted them
the ability to converse creatively in the same language itself. As mentioned by Chu et al
(2019), peer influence may result in the development of communication, confidence, and
collaboration among human beings. Nevertheless, Wang et al (2021), also strongly mentioned
that peer influences and especially exposure to the mass media may render negative results in
human behavior modeling. In this manner, exposure to peer influences as young adults may
expose a human being to acquire negative behavioral traits. Based on the responses, all
chosen participants have attested to the undeniable fact that by being they have managed to
consciously acquire new bad words, and vulgar slang, by being exposed to the Mass Media of
the American Entertainment Industry such as renowned Situational-Comedies being
“Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory”. To summarise, the Human Behaviour Modelling
Theory as developed by the late Professor Albert Bandura proved that human beings may not
only mentally rehearse and physically replicate good behavioral traits or speech patterns, but
negative ones as well.
The Late Canadian

Psychologist
Prof. Albert Bandura
(1925-2021)
Diagram 9:Professor Albert Bandura’s Theory II
4.15.3 Theme III: Perceptions of Stereotypes (Late Professor Albert Bandura)
The Perception of Malaysian English Accent based on the Gender Psychology of Human
Behaviour.
As a chief aspect in this research paper, the gender of an individual may profoundly
affect the way an individual acquires and expresses a language in general. Provisional results
from the interview have managed to summarise simple demographics of gender that out of
the 10 chosen participants, 5 of them were male and 5 of them were female. Interestingly, in
the psychology of gender in a language, as mentioned by Hyde et al (2019) males tend to use
the English Language with maximum Emotional Independence when it comes to organizing
sentences and speech patterns when speaking. Nevertheless, females are more prone to
Emotional Dependence where their stress of words, pitch contour, and intonation heavily rely
on their psychological state of feelings being inextricably linked to their current emotional
state. Based on the semi-structured interview responses, all 5 male participants agree that
their main style of forming sentence structures and speech patterns is largely dependent on
their ability to describe objects or events without completely giving in to their emotions as
well. On the other hand, 5 female participants in this study have provided a narrative that
their communication style, comprised of pitch, and tone contour is heavily induced by their
current state of mind, emotional relationship with other individuals, and most importantly
their present state of body hormones as well.
As an inference, all 5 female participants agree that their communication style would
dominantly be composed of loud, high-pitch stressed shouting, during their menstruation
cycle, which causes extreme irritability, anger, and mood swings which is largely absent in
male participants. Therefore, this evidence, beautifully correlates with the Psychology of
Human Behaviour based on Gender, that women’s communication styles are largely tied to
their emotional feelings, which may be largely influenced by their hormonal changes i.e.,
fluctuations in estrogens and progesterone levels that occur during their menstruation cycle
(Smith et al, 2019). Nonetheless, the results of this study are by no means applicable to all
women thriving in different cultural contextual groups, worldwide.
4.15.4 Theme IV: Intolerance Towards New Influences (Late Professor Albert Bandura)
Traditional Stereotypes vs Concurrent Reality based on Gender Norms in the Society
The Psychology of Language and Gender in this study has yielded tremendous loads
of data results that, although males may only choose to exercise emotional control and self-
reliance on low-intensity negative emotions such as sadness, grief, and despair, by
suppressing their feelings, which may correlate back to the traditional stereotype that men
suppress their emotions by holding it back to communicate assertively, and may not openly
express their emotions through language (Amarasekara & Grant, 2019). However, results of
the semi-structured interview session introduced that this may be largely true for males to
exercise emotional control in low-intensity emotions such as sadness and anger. In this
scenario, all 5 male participants agree that they tend to use vulgar swear words or local curse
words during daily-life situations when high-intensity negative emotions are present such as
extreme anger, frustration, and anxiety. Therefore, the concurrent reality from this research is
that males may not always exercise emotional control in all situational settings, but may
choose to exert themselves to display self-reliance in high-intensity negative situations which
is another component as illustrated in the theoretical framework. On the other hand, although
this study's results indicate that females are largely influenced by their high-intensity negative
emotions such as anger, elatedness, and elastic, and low-intensity negative emotions such as
sadness, despair, and boredom, may correlate back to the traditional stereotype that females
are dominantly shaped by their emotions as well. By analyzing the deeper components of the
semi-structured interview, all 5 female participants
agree that as women, they are expected to condone empathetic values such as using soft
euphemistic language, and being polite even when experiencing high-intensity negative
emotions as explained earlier. To summarise, all 5 male and female participants in this
chosen study have attested that they have used both vulgar swear words even in situations of
high-intensity positive emotions to express joy such as happiness, excitement, and surprise
(Otterbring, 2021). Henceforth, the concurrent reality accurately complements the third
theoretical framework that both male and female participants may condone towards either
emotional expressiveness or repressiveness based on the situations and intensity of their
emotions depending on the contextual settings. Nonetheless, the results of this study are by
no means entirely applicable to all men and women worldwide.
4.16 OUTCOME OF THE DISCUSSION

Psychological Implication of Accent Studies
This section of the study is dedicated to explaining, the psychological outcomes and
impacts of the discussion section. In that regard, it is highly imperative to consider that.
Malaysian English Accent (SE) is learned via oral imitation, and mental rehearsing that
ultimately leads to physical replication (Human Behaviour Modelling Theory, Albert
Bandura). Moreover, vocal intonations, stress markers, and pitches of a language have been
subconsciously practiced by Participants without their knowledge beyond their intent
Nevertheless, the chosen participants people as human beings may overall develop accent
bias example, the American and British accent displays the best culture of English due to
English being originated from there. Another anecdote worthy of note is that the chosen
participants' usage of English was largely influenced by the LAD Organ inhibited in their
memories even since childhood as evidenced ever since their infant stage for having
preferences for having being exposed to their mother tongue Mandarin and the Malaysian
English Accent (ME) by their parents. When individuals listen to their accents, they tend to
have a positive bias towards the prosody which is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech
when someone is talking. Prosody may often reflect the speaker’s features such as the
emotional state which cannot be usually encoded by diction or grammar. To summarise, it
cannot be denied that the chosen participants were largely influenced by the British English
Accent accompanied by the unique communication pattern of Malay and Indians despite the
high influence of the British Accent in receiving education in Malaysian National Schools.
4.17. MINOR RATIO OF GENDER

AMOUNT OF PARTICIPANTS INVOLVED IN THIS
STUDY BASED ON GENDER
5; 50% 5; 50%
MALE FEMALE
Diagram 10: Pie Chart Basic Gender Demographics .
Source: (Study Findings, 2022)
Based on the study that has been conducted, the pie chart above illustrates the minor
ratio of participants involved in this study, based on their gender. From the semi-structured
interview session, a total of 10 participants were chosen from the academic Program of
English Major Students at TARUMT. Based on the feedback received, an accurate analysis
was executed in determining the respective ratio of gender involved in this study. Therefore,
an equal number of male and female participants were involved in this study, where 5 males
were selected which contributed to a total of 50%, and also 5 females were selected equally
contributing to 50% of the value as well. All of the chosen participants were Chinese but for
the sake of ethical considerations, their personal information such as names, ages, and
personal preferences have been omitted from this study.
4.18 SUMMARY
Based on the discussion section of this study, all chosen participants attest to the fact
that they agree with the numerous usage of Malaysian English Accents (ME) in their daily
lives but they are also externally influenced by the British and American Accents due to
media influences, which beautifully correlates to the behavior of Imitation is the central
learning principle in the behavior modeling theory proposed by Albert Bandura in the Social
Cognitive Development of the Human Mind). Moreover, Participants have attested that the
way they talk reveals several kinds of information. From the interview sessions conducted,
levels of education, domestic settings, external social influences, ethnical heritage, and the
influence of Mother tongue, LAD input received during the critical learning period has
significant credibility on the perceptions of Malaysian English Accents (SE) among the
chosen participants. Beyond that, the psychological scope of gender does play a dominant
role in determining the pre-sets of communication styles among the chosen participants.
4.19 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, this section of the discussion would like to summarise the chief
analysis to respectfully answer the third research question and its objective concerning the
relationship between the pronunciation of words and the perception of students in adopting
the Malaysian English Accent (ME), that is largely caused by LAD Acquisition, Peer
Influences and Psychological facets of Gender.
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
5.1 SUMMARY
Based on the empirical process of completing the Final Year Project on analyzing the
Characteristics and Perceptions of Malaysian English Accents (ME) among English Major
Students, at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology (TARUMT), all
findings were largely reported manually. As aforementioned earlier, all physical
arrangements such as appointments with the respected Supervisors, assignment submissions,
and the assessment of this research paper by the Supervisor to the main office have been
compiled methodologically and submitted to the main office. To further enhance the field of
linguistics, this Final Year Project is proposed to present the Characteristics of Malaysian
Vocabularies, transcribed orally into both regular and phonetic orthographies in the English
Language, based on the International British Phonemic Chart and Pimsleur Language
Assessment Battery (PLAB) for increasing the scope of linguistic accuracy. Moreover, the
integration of three theoretical frameworks as discussed previously in the earlier chapters
seeks to not only answer the Characteristics of Malaysian English Accents but also
successfully resolve the abstract elements of Perceptions of Nature vs Nurture presented by
Professors Noam Chomsky and Albert Bandura respectively, in the scientific attempt to
answer all 3 research questions and objectives presented in the earlier chapters of this study.
Henceforth, this academic paper respectively includes all the functionalities required not only
to answer the research questions and objectives but to also birth a psychological correlation
between the fields of Linguistics and Psychology being inextricably linked to one another.
In the total development of this Final Year Project on analyzing the Characteristics
and the Perceptions of Malaysian English Accents (ME) among English Major Students, all
the necessary deliverables have been successfully addressed. In this paper, six chapters have
been discussed with valid evidence and justification to further strengthen the empirical needs
of this research. These Chapters are Chapter 1 Introduction, Chapter 2 Literature Review,
Chapter 3 Research Methodology, Chapter 4 Research Results & Discussion, and finally
Chapter 6: Conclusion. During the analysis phase, semi-structured interview sessions,
Phonetic transcriptions with Microsoft Phonetic Transcription Software were annexed as the
chief methodology of research, to determine the Characteristics and Perceptions of Malaysian
English accents (SE) among English Major Students. Words with remarkable accent
differences were tabulated and transcribed via the International British
Phonemic Chart (IPA) as a benchmark of assessment in English language studies to
conceive a valid input of Accent influences and the divergence of external influences in
Malaysian English Accent Studies. Additionally, in the Discussion section of this research
paper, the responses from the semi-structured interview sessions were divided according to
the thematic content based on the psychological frameworks that have been both modified
and designed by the late Professor Albert Bandura and the Natural Language Acquisition
Theory by Professor Noam Chomsky. The proposed system of utilizing thematic content of
division as the chief manner of extracting qualitative data is justified via, the deductive latent
approach proposed by Psychologists from the American Psychologists Association (APA) as
a flexible method to analyze abstract qualitative data hailing from audios, videos, transcripts
and any other received documents embedded with pre-conceived themes, based on the
existing knowledge that is being researched on the academic paper of English Linguistic
Studies. Nevertheless, a valid anecdote must be highlighted that the Phonological
Transcription approach was not analyzed from the scopes of Semantics or Pragmatics, nor a
directly controlled single speech was further provided to significantly reduce the
phenomenon of Placebo effect among the chosen interview participants in this study. Next,
some of the key aspects in terms of analyzing the thematic contents of this study were not
only focused on identifying the Perceptions of English Major Students towards the Malaysian
English Accent (ME) but then again to also receive authentic responses in the analysis of the
discussion part of this research paper. Henceforward, the feedback and responses received in
the semi-structured interview sessions were constantly reviewed not only for maximum
scientific accuracy but then again to also enable the chosen participants to comprehend the
semi-structured interview questions to further magnify the nocebo effect in terms of their
influences in learning to adopt towards the Malaysian English Accent (ME) in this study.
5.2 ACHIEVEMENTS
In this paper, throughout the overall system developments on analyzing the

Students, all forms of conceptual frameworks and respective modules have been valuable in
attempting to extract the valuable qualitative data conducted based on the correlational scales,
based on the current research scope. In simple terminology, all functionalities and
research questions conceived at the early part of this research, along with the responses from
the chosen participants were able to provide an effective analysis to complement the
theoretical frameworks birthed alongside answering all of the research objectives and
questions respectively. The fully developed systems of three different conceptual frameworks
are now able to support the academic findings presented from the beginning until the final
report of this paper when it shall be submitted to the main office. The first conceptual
framework is designed by Professor Noam Chomsky in such a manner, that it may be used to
analyze the chief aspects of identifying the natural influences of the chosen participants in
learning the English Language, being largely influenced by British English in all National
Schools in Malaysia. Therefore, this process would require the researcher to Phonetically
transcribe all same words uttered by the chosen participants in the semi-structured interview
sessions which requires an immense amount of time in not only transcribing but also
justifying the reason why it has been presented as valid data in answering the first research
question and its counterpart objective respectively. Moreover, the analysis sections were
carefully observed with factors of high sustainability and content validity by both of the
Supervisors for logical consistency in all tabulated datum, phonetic orthographies, pie charts,
layouts of thematic contents, and all of its designs.
The chief strength of the developed conceptual frameworks can be observed in its
sheer remarkability in the attempt to present both concrete and abstract qualitative data in the
scope of identifying Characteristics of Malaysian English Accents (ME) and its Perceptions
among English Major Students at Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and
Technology (TARUMT). Moreover, it also provides an unprecedented scope in the field of
English Studies, by infusing the two distinct domains of academic scopes, namely linguistics
and psychology, that may have been largely deemed as two separate scopes dissimilar and
impertinent towards one another, have been proved as being largely inextricably linked
towards one another in terms of assimilating both theories of Language Acquisition Device
(LAD) and The Human Behaviour Modelling Theory to birth a unique thematic response in
the scope of linguistics that has been largely absent in previous studies that chiefly focused
on the quantitative or numerical statistics on the types of Malaysian Accents being presented
in Accent Studies within Higher-Tertiary Education.
The limited timeframe is one of the significant challenges in the overall development
of this project paper. Due to all the processes of the conceptual framework being
indistinguishably related to one another, each chapter would need to be completed
within the appointed deadline for instant reviewing by the respective Supervisors for final
evaluation. Moreover, justification on the need to highlight the grey areas of this own
research and the largely uncharted topics by past researchers is also a key factor that includes
an immense number of revisions and rectifications to minimize errors and placebo effect in
birthing the analysis of this academic paper presented in Higher-Tertiary Education.
5.3 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ACADEMIC SCOPE

The main objective of presenting the Final Year Project of analyzing the
Students, is to tabulate the ability of the chosen participants to be influenced by their
Language Acquisition Device (LAD) at the critical learning period that is dominantly shaped
by the British English Accent. Nevertheless, it has also been proved that external peer
influences lead to mental rehearsal and physical replication of the learned behavior,
psychologically correlates back towards the Social Cognitive scope that human beings are
social creatures where they learn not only behavior but also speech intonation, stress, pitch
markers and elements of tonal fluctuation based on the external influences learned outside of
their domestic environments being at Higher-Tertiary Institutions and also the mass media
influences being abundantly available due to the vast exposure towards modern media within
the 21st century, correlates towards their exposure towards the equal emphasis on the
American English Accent.
Chief proponents that were dominantly used as the main mode of Methodology
witnessed semi-structured qualitative interviews and also the utilization of Microsoft
Phonetic Transcriber which is extremely beneficial in providing both valid and reliable
Phonetic Transcription that would be of great benefit towards academic papers being largely
focused on the aspects of pronunciation, stress intonation and pitch in English studies. In this
scenario, the Microsoft Phonetic Transcriber Software is principally able to execute
computerized Phonetic Transcriptions, not only for British and American Accents but also for
other foreign English Accents being classified under Received Pronunciation (RP) as well.
This is further achieved by placing the spelling of the word based on its pronunciation order
in the tabs provided and then by clicking the signages of other respective foreign stress
markers that would be transcribed on how the particular Malaysian pronunciation is closely
similar or different from the British or American English Accents. Moreover, the semi-
structured interviews are
transcribed from the chosen participants as to further provide clarity for the researcher
in attempting to dissect the same words used by the participants to further differentiate
pronunciation aspects with dissimilar phonetic orthographies. Henceforth, this method of data
extraction system was initially developed as it enabled the researcher to fulfill the academic
requirement of this research paper in a limited timespan which conceives convenience
accompanied by a reliable collection of data being illustrated in the results and discussions
session.
5.4 DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

For improvements, the academic scope of this research may also be expanded on
analyzing the Quantitative aspects as well alongside the reviewing process of the thematic
content of the discussion part, which could be further reviewed given that a longer duration as
it would allow both the researcher and supervisors to further expand on key elements while
rectifying overlooked aspects that would be of immense benefit to analyze in the discussion
section of this study. Apart from that, the correlational designs of selecting the chosen
participants in this study could be further improvised for a descriptive approach where
participants may be chosen hailing from various geographical topographies that would birth a
tremendous amount of data in terms of their perceptions towards the English Accents not
being restricted towards a particular locality. Besides that, the collaboration of this research
topic could also be expanded in postgraduate levels of Higher-Tertiary Education where 2 or
more researchers could form an academic alliance by resolving the grey areas presented even
in this research by cooperating. On the other hand, the specified topic mentioned in this
research paper may be further expanded into branches of Semantics, Pragmatics, Syntax,
Morphology, and even for Discourse Analysis purposes at Postgraduate levels. Therefore,
this would help to eliminate the dogmatic correlational perception which may be found in an
academic paper conducted by a single researcher, which may not be largely present in
collaborative academic papers carried out equivocally.
5.5 ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS

During the development of the Final Year Project analysis on the Characteristics and
the Perceptions of Malaysian English Accents (ME) among English Major Students at Tunku
Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology (TARUMT), some issues have
been encountered by the researcher at hand. Firstly, the chief issue would be the
development of generating appropriate questions to be presented in the semi-

structured interview session. The questions developed for the interview session would also
need to correlate back to the chosen theoretical frameworks developed in the earlier chapters.
Moreover, the thematic content was constantly reviewed by the Supervisors within a limited
stipulated timeframe. Henceforth, the issue is resolved with the basis of referencing the
concurrent validity of how past research papers would concoct interview questions and the
appropriate psychological manner of dividing the analysis based on thematic contents greatly
eased the production of the results and discussion section of this paper. To recapitulate, the
researcher hopes that the contents of this paper would be used as a reference in Higher-
Tertiary Education, especially in the fields of Language and Psychology, and aspires that the
contents of this study would be further researched by young scholars from a different
perspectives.
APPENDICES
Below here are the screenshots of the speech transcription process executed via Microsoft
Phonetic Transcription Software built for Windows 10 and above.
Step 1: Choosing the type of pronunciation Step 5: Click on apply Phonemic Variations
Step 2: Choosing the right Phonemic Variation
Step 3: Input the English Transcription

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FINAL YEAR PROJECT

THE PERCEPTION OF MALAYSIAN ENGLISH

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES

Supervisor: Ms. Sridevi A/P Balakrishnan

A project report respectfully submitted to the

Faculty of Social Science and Humanities in fulfilment

Department of English Language Studies

Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management & Technology

Copyright by Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management &

A special thanks to my supervisor, Ms. Sridevi A/P Balakrishnan, and my co-

Nonetheless, my deepest appreciation goes to my beloved parents for providing me

Thank you, everyone.

LIST OF KEY TERMS

Linguistic Repertoire = As mentioned by Sabino (2017), the ability of a speaker to

Stereotypes = Professor of Psychological Science, Harrits (2018), defines this as a mental

Mother tongue = Interestingly, Saphari et al (2017) describes this as a root language of an

Manglish = A Malaysian Writer Kim (2019), attempts to describe this as a native-based

Multicultural = As mentioned by Jaladin (2017), it is described as the state of a society that

Situational-Comedy = As mentioned by Dixon (2019) it represents a genre of show centred

Peer influence = As highlighted by Andrews et al (2020) it depicts the desire to do

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE NUMBER

List of Key Terms………………………………………………………. iv

Chapter 2: Literature Review……………………………………………. 13

2.1 Definition of the Key Word Accents………………………………………………….. 13-14

Chapter 3: Methodology of Research…………………………………. 22

3.6 Description of Sample Size……………………………………………………….. 23

Chapter 4: Research Results & Discussion ………………………………….

4.9.11 Interview Questions Raised………………………………………………………………………. 58

LIST OF TABLES & DIAGRAMS

Table1.1 Sub-Varieties of Malaysian English-Chapter 1

Table 1.2 Evidence of Pronunciation Phonological Variation Based on British IPA-Chapter

Table 1.3 Evidence of American Phonological Variation Based on British IPA-Chapter 4

Diagram 1 Noam Chomsky’s LAD Theory -Chapter 3

Diagram 2 Albert Bandura’s Human Modelling Theory- Chapter 3

Diagram 3: Practical Annexation of PLAB and PhoTransEdit Software- Chapter 3

Diagram 4 Description of Project Timeline- Chapter 3

Diagram 5: Participant’s Response-Chapter 4

Diagram 6: Analysis of Linguo-Psychological Thematic Response-Chapter 4

Diagram 7: Professor Noam Chomsky’s Theory-Chapter 4

Diagram 8: Late Professor’s Albert Bandura’s Theory I -Chapter 4

Diagram 9: Late Professor’s Albert Bandura’s Theory II-Chapter 4

Diagram 10: Pie Chart Based on Gender Demographics- Chapter 4

1.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2022), an accent can be described as a

1.3 PROBLEM STATEMENT

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF STUDY

The production of this research is highly significant and includes numerous

1.5 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The research objectives of this study are as follows:

1. To identify different types of English pronunciations and their characteristics

1.6 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The research questions of this study are as follows:

1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

participants were chiefly reported to be of Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese, and Modern

To summarise, planning and the execution of this research includes several

2.1 DEFINITION OF KEY WORD-ACCENT

2.2 REVIEWS OF LITERATURE

2.2.1 Great Britain English Accent Studies

As mentioned by Sharma et al (2022), the field of English studies in “First World

The dominating influencing factors of a speaker’s way of pronouncing words are

2.2.2 Australian English Academic Communications

On a note, the pronunciation features of Australian English only display chief

The empirical study conducted seemed to display pitch-contour differences between