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communications. Attitudinally, the four guides’ views toward Thai English supports what Shaw (1983)
found in eliciting Thai students’ acceptability of Thai English as a model due to its unclear status of
broken English. Similarly, the three guides viewed that Thai English was weak English and thought they
did not possess this variety while only one accepted his Thai identity of English. This is also similar to
what Buripakdi (2008) found that only one Thai English creative writer viewed that he possessed Thai
English while the others marginalized Thai English as a rotten form of English.
The above interpretation implies linguistic distinctiveness of English used by the mesolectal
tour guides in Thailand who uniquely created sounds, words, sentences, and discourse styles in Thai
English. They are developing Thai English as another non-native variety of Asian Englishes in the
Expanding Circle according to Kachru’s (1985; 2005) work. Though English used by Thai guides or any
other Thais was not mentioned in Platt et al (1984), the statement that users of the mesolectal
varieties are the largest in societies of New Englishes and the acrolect and mesolect varieties are
considered ‘New Englishes’ such as Singapore English and Indian English could be applied to this study.
These guides holding the mesolectal variety of Thai English would also be regarded as other users of
New Englishes.
Conclusion
This study has revealed that the selected guides in Phuket, Krabi and Pang-nga have attained
the mesolectal variety of Thai English as seen in their oral English which conveyed Thai identity of
English sounds, words, sentences, and discourse styles. Moreover, they realized that their English is
regarded as another level of Thai English.
Acknowledgements
The researcher would like to thank the Institute of Research and Development, Thaksin
University (TSU) for its financial support and Dr. Irish C. Sioson of TSU Western Languages Department
for her editing.
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