Which Englishes do the Dutch prefer? Anti-nationalism versus speaker authenticity

Abstract

English as a foreign language education in the Netherlands follows the norms of native speaker varieties, but limitations of these models led scholars to debate whether non-native models should be adopted instead. This debate, however, is limited to arguments in favor or against non-native speaker models and ignores the possibility that learners might prefer multiple varieties. Moreover, their opinions are mostly ignored. Therefore, I have set out to discover which varieties Dutch learners prefer in various contexts and what their motivations are. Three focus group discussions (N=16) with Dutch students and graduates provided an answer. Afterwards, six English teachers reflected on the preliminary results in individual interviews. During the thematic analysis, attention was paid to learners’ awareness of the potential that non-native speaker varieties have in terms of intelligibility. Furthermore, learners’ preferences for varieties as motivated by the construction of identities were analyzed with Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004) tactics of intersubjectivity. This analysis showed that the Dutch prefer native speaker varieties over their own non-native one for two main reasons: they believe native speaker varieties are more intelligible, and they desire an international identity, for which they need to sound like a native. However, Dutch people often produce unnatural native speaker English, in which case the learners prefer Dutch English. Furthermore, there is an equal distribution of preference for British and American English, which suggest that the current educational system, which mainly supports the British model, needs to change. Further research could look into ways to implement this change.