Abstract:
The objective of this research is to study the variation of Thai air hostesses pronunciation of the final consonants (t∫, dᴣ,∫) in English words effecting by 2 social variables, these are the English language experience of the speakers and the language context. The subjects were 60 Thai air hostesses devided into 2 groups. Half of the subjects were the speakers with more English experience and the rest were subjects with less English experience. The subjects were interviewed by cue-card technique with 15 test items appearing in Thai context and 15 test items appearing in English context. The hypothesis of this research is that subjects with less English language experience will be interfered by the mother tongues language system more than those with more language experience. Their pronunciation of the variables will be close to the Thai pronunciation. The subjects with more experience will have less mother tongue interferences. Their pronunciation will be close to the English pronunciation. The findings reveal a relationship between the variation of the linguistic variables and the social variables. The variation of all 3 linguistic variables is statistically significant (p<0.05) except the variation of (∫) under the English language experience, and (dᴣ) under the language context. The result of the research indicates that the variation of the variable (t∫) and (dᴣ) is very similar. The less experienced group has biased towards the Thai pronunciation especially in the Thai context, and this bias is reduced in English context. On the other hand, the more experienced group has biased towards the English pronunciation especially in the English context and this bias is reduced in Thai context. The variable (∫) is the most problematic one in the pronunciation. Subjects show a wide approximation to the English pronunciation. Both groups of subjects produce a lot of interlanguage variants.