Attitudes Toward Saudi English: Decentering the Inner-Circle

This article reports on the first study to investigate Saudis’ attitudes toward Saudi English (SauE). To situate Saudi speakers’ attitudes within the sociolinguistic ecology of language use, this study invited 80 Saudi participants to respond to an audio stimulus featuring Indian English alongside SauE in an attempt to more realistically depict the use of English use in Saudi Arabia. This task was carried out using an Interactive Verbal Guise Technique (IVGT), an innovative approach in which listeners evaluate English varieties as they are used in a naturally occurring interaction. To supplement this indirect method, participants were asked to fill out an attitude questionnaire consisting of closed-ended and open-ended questions. The findings of the IVGT showed that participants rated the Saudi speaker highly in both power and solidarity scales. The responses on the attitude questionnaire also revealed expressions of ownership and legitimacy of SauE. By decentering inner-circle Englishes in the study of language attitudes, the results of this study suggest that ecologically valid studies of language attitudes can yield results which express ownership in local varieties of English.