Exposure to English accents in underraduate settings: Gendered responses?

 Educators in the Brunei Darussalam’s education system are predominantly locals, and are many havereceived their education from local universities. In addition, the first language of most of thepopulation is one of the seven indigenous languages including Brunei Malay. Therefore, it is notuncommon to hear educators speaking in English with a local accent. This, however, is seen to comewith a preconceived notion of status and competence to the interlocutor. Being in a setting whereboth attributes are expected to be high in educators to bridge trust between students and teachers,and assimilate knowledge transfer, it is interesting to see if the local students’ preconceived notionsare reflective of the low status-low competence attributed to non-native-like accents abroad.Furthermore, gender is also a vital variable in investigating the current study as Brunei is a patriarchalsociety, but women are lavishly pampered with equal opportunities as men. The current studysuggests that male speakers of Received-Pronunciation and Brunei accents are the anchors for statusand competence traits, and thus, gender may very well be a factor that determines the status andcompetence of the accented English-speakers in the patriarchal Sultanate.