This study examines the impact of audio vs. visual stimuli on attitudes towards different varieties of English. Previous research (e.g., Hansen Edwards, Zampini, & Cunningham, 2019; Tan & Castelli, 2013) has employed either survey data or Verbal or Matched Guise Techniques (V/MGT). These approaches, however, offer a limited view into language attitudes as the participants only have exposure to survey or audio stimuli, which does not reflect real life face-to-face and online communication, the latter of which increasingly incorporates visual stimuli given the preponderance of Zoom and Facetime and other communications technologies. To date, it is not clear how visual stimuli impacts language attitudes.

The current study attempts to address this gap through a study with three modes: 1. Audio only, 2. Audio and Visual mode, and 3. Audio and Visual with face mask. Two speakers each of Indian, Malaysian, and Indonesian English were recorded in a conversational speech style in each mode. One hundred Hong Kong listeners rated each extract on a 1-9 Likert Scale for level of accentedness, comprehensibility, and acceptability. They were also asked to indicate the speaker’s origin and variety of English spoken.

            Across all three tasks, ratings of accentedness were the lowest, followed by ratings of comprehensibility while ratings of acceptability were the highest. This indicates that while listeners felt that the speakers’ speech was accented, they felt that it was comprehensible and acceptable. However, variety-specific results were found was well: Malaysian and Indonesian English speakers were rated as more accented, less comprehensible, and less acceptable in the visual stimuli tasks than in the audio task while the speakers of Indian English were rated less accented, more comprehensible, and more acceptable in the visual modes than in the audio mode. These results will be discussed in detail along with future directions for language attitudes research.