Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
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2.2Models for PronunciationAs presented in the previous chapter, the current role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and English as an International Language (EIL) has lead us to reexamine the standard ideology of the native speaker as a model for English instruction. The following chapter explores the notion of a standard and aims to propose an alternative approach based on the suggestions from the current research. Before the proposed new approaches can be discussed, it is essential to clarify what this term standard language ideology stands for, and that is the aim of the first subchapter. Several linguists’ views of what a standard is will be presented. In the next section, suggested shift towards a more liberal, global approach for pronunciation teaching will be presented based on the theoretical work of Jenkins and Seidlhofer. In the third part, Sung’s, Timmis’ and Jenkins’ research aimed at exploring the learners’ and teachers’ views of the NS and NNS norms will be examined. 2.2.1Standard English: what it isn’tThe title of this chapter is a reference to a paper written by Trudgill (1999) as a contribution to the debate over the English language standardization. In this paper, Trudgill gives a characterization of Standard English, which is an issue closely connected to the subject of this chapter, and he tries to dispel certain widely held misconceptions regarding the nature of Standard English. In a search for an English standard, various theories have been proposed in the field of sociolinguistics (See, for example, Joseph, 1987, Widdowson, 1993, Crystal, 2003, Trudgill and Hannah, 2008), and no general consensus has been reached so far. There are two opposing views, one which claims that standard is an idealized norm, while the other sees standard as an actual variety of English. For example, Jenkins (2003, p. 29) describes standard language in general as “a prestige variety (…) spoken by a minority of people within a society, typically those occupying positions of power”, and Standard English as a variety which evolved from the language used by educated people in the area encompassing London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Trudgill (1999, p. 118) adds, that Standard English is the variety normally used in writing and printing, and it is “the variety associated with the education system in English-speaking countries”, as well as the one “taught to non-native learners”. Due to the political and economic influence of the USA, their language gained independence, and we can now talk about a “double standard” for English, with US Standard English joining the British Standard (Mesthrie, Swann, Deumert, & Leap, 2000/2011). Most scholars agree that there is a standard, which is concerned with grammar, vocabulary, and orthography, however, there is a disagreement whether pronunciation, and subsequently accent, is also part of that standard. However majority of linguists believe Standard English is not a matter of pronunciation. The term accent is sometimes confused with the notion of dialect, as something non-standard. Then descriptions such as “accented” and “unaccented” speech are employed to differentiate between a widely accepted norm and a deviation from the norm. In contrast, Wardhaugh (2010, p. 46) claims that "it is impossible to speak English without an accent “, and there is “no such thing as unaccented English”. Wardhaugh further explains that accent is not in contradiction with the use of Standard English: Standard English, for example, is spoken in a variety of accents, often with clear regional and social associations: there are accents associated with North America, Singapore, India, Liverpool (Scouse), Tyneside (Geordie), Boston, New York, and so on. However, many people who live in such places show a remarkable uniformity to one another in their grammar and vocabulary because they speak Standard English and the differences are merely those of accent, i.e., how they pronounce what they say (Wardhaugh, 2010). However, the term “standard pronunciation” is widely used in literature, therefore there must be some pronunciation perceived as the least marked, as standard. Since English language lacks an official standardizing institution, an academy regulating and prescribing the standard like it is in the case of, for example, French, there is no control over the language change. A standard is therefore a variety socially accepted as a norm, and ‘standard language ideology’, to use Seidlhofer’s words, is “the belief that imposed language uniformity is good for society and that the standard variety is the only legitimate one” (2011, p. 42). Cruttenden (2008) presents that the most socially accepted, preferable accent has traditionally been Received Pronunciation, because it had been spoken in the most influential London region. It had lost some of the characteristics of London speech over the time, and became rather an accent of a ruling class, thus regional accent marked the speakers socially inferior. RP accent has gradually lost the high prestige attached to it, and is now more commonly heard as a mixture of regional features together with RP. The fast changing perception of standards can be illustrated by the changes made in the last two editions of Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (Cruttenden, 2008, 2014), which rank among the most widely used reference books for English pronunciation. In the foreword to the newest edition, the author notes that the section describing ‘the evolution of a standard language’ has been completely rewritten, and the book cannot be said to describe RP anymore. Although there has been a more flexible approach in the later editions towards a more modern RP standard, he now concludes that RP is seen as an archaic, outdated pronunciation model. He therefore uses the term General British for “the description of a standard accent of English English”, which now permits larger “generational, social and regional variation” (2014, p. 6). The author also devoted more space to the description of variation among some other standard and regional accents, which points to the author’s changing attitude towards language homogeneity and a gradual shift from the standard language ideology. This exemplifies the general shift from idealization, invariance and uniformity towards an acceptance of variation. 2.2.2Model for ELTThis emerging choice of options for pronunciation has many implications on the language teaching and learning, namely the possible confusion as to what model of English pronunciation should be presented as the model for teaching. RP, now evolved and referred to as GB, has been the traditional model for the learners of British English, and it remains to be the model in many parts of the world due to historical reasons, namely in Europe, Africa, Indian subcontinent, parts of Asia and South America (Cruttenden, 2007). As a second option for language instruction General American has been a model for those influenced by the American authority. Australian or Scottish English are other suggested standards which could be preferred as models for ELT for geographical reasons or because of their similarity with the sounds in the first language. It was assumed that a native speaker variety should be used as a target for any second/foreign language learners. However, a different model can be employed to meet the needs of each specific setting. As Cruttenden proposes, “for those learners who have much contact with native speakers (…) this may continue to be the target” (2014, p. 326). According to Crystal, one will teach that accent which the student is most likely to come into contact with in his English-speaking life, and this will be largely decided by which country his own is most strongly influenced by, either politically, culturally, economically, educationally, or in any other way” (1967, p. 7). Due to the worldwide expansion of English as discussed in chapter 2.1, and the number of non-native speakers who use it for international communication, the necessity to acquire a native speaker accent is often questioned. For one reason, some learners might have a very limited encounter with native speakers, and further, it has been demonstrated by numerous research that it is very unlikely to achieve a perfect command of a language unless one begins to learn it as a child. According to Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource Book for Students (Collins & Mees, 2003), it is important to set achievable goals at the beginning, and if perfect pronunciation is someone’s goal, then they may need to accept that they will never achieve it. A more realistic aim would be to “speak in a way which is clearly intelligible to our listeners and which does not distract, irritate or confuse them” (p. 186). Therefore, researchers have been examining the interactions among NNS and between NNS and NS to find out which errors of pronunciation have been causing intelligibility issues. A research aimed at identifying the intelligibility of a speech sample is however very difficult to conduct, as there are many non-linguistic factors which effect comprehensibility apart from the listener’s familiarity with the accent or the closeness of their L1: the familiarity with the topic, level of concentration or tiredness, and an overall judgement of the speaker – their ethnic, racial, and linguacultural differences (See, for example, Lambert et al., 1960). Jenkins’ study of those features based on an analysis of a large speech sample collected over a course on several years has resulted in her proposal of LFC - Lingua Franca Core, a pedagogical core of phonological intelligibility for speakers of ELF (Jenkins, 2000). She approached this issue based on the previous findings of the phonetician Bryan Jenner from the late 1980s when he was among the first ones to claim that many learners don’t need to or want to sound native-like. Her aim is to focus the teachers on the instruction of those features which are given higher priority in terms of intelligibility. Jenkins also points to the significant impact of L1 transfer, the transfer of phonological features from one’s first language into the language of instruction. She explains that “since L1 pronunciation is to a considerable extent the product of a habit, its features are likely to be transferred automatically in the production of a second language” (p. 171). This process then results in L1-specific errors varying according to the learner’s first language. Jenkins claims that when implementing the LFC in their instruction, ELF teachers don’t need to work on reduction of the features from L1 transfer, but rather on “’adding’ of a small number of essential core items, leaving precious time to work on these more thoroughly and therefore with far greater hope of success” (p. 160). Jenkins adds that teaching of the LFC alone will not guarantee a successful international communication in English. She talks about the need to develop the learners’ accommodation skills, meaning converging to the interlocutors’ pronunciation, as well as the listeners’ receptive competence. As Jenkins lists, receptive convergence, a part of receptive competence, depends upon:
The competence connected to interlocutor’s accent familiarity and attitudes towards errors need to be the subject of English language teaching along with the focus on production of the core items. Non-core items form part of the other English varieties to which learners are exposed through their mutual interaction or from other sources, and the focus is only on their reception. But before such instruction can take place, the teachers need to change their attitudes towards the different non-native varieties. Jenkins proposes that “a sociolinguistics component dealing specifically with the social and psychological issues involved in accent variation” should be part of the teacher education, so that teachers are “equipped with means of changing their students’ attitudes” (1998, p. 125). The need for further description of the language used among NNS to provide base for empirical research has led to a creation of a corpus of ELF interactions. VOICE, the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English is now a valuable source of evidence of how the ELF phenomenon is manifested in the natural spoken interactions (See Seidlhofer, 2011). Although Jenkins’ propositions seem highly beneficial, according to numerous research, most teachers and learners are not prepared to give up on their goal to achieve a native English accent, although they can be viewed as potential ELF speakers, as they are likely to communicate with other NNS as supposed to NS. In the following section, research aimed at examining the teachers’ and learners’ attitudes and objectives will be presented.
Driven by Jenkins’ (1998, p. 125) insistence on restraining from “telling our learners what their goals should be”, Timmis (2002) conducted a research among 600 students and teachers from 45 countries to find out their attitudes towards conforming to native-speaker norms. The research was carried out through a questionnaire focusing on two areas – the pronunciation and a written-based grammar in relation to an informal grammar featured in the spoken corpora, and was supported by a number of interviews. Timmis concentrated on the issue of accent, because, as he explains, “accent, in many ways, seems to go to the heart of the native-speaker issue” (p. 241). Students and teachers were asked to choose the preferable from two quotations which represented a native-speaker competence and an accented international intelligibility. The results revealed a preference of native-speaker pronunciation as a goal among the students (67%). The interviews were aimed at finding the reasons behind their choices, however, as Timmis himself notes, the interviews were carried only with a relatively closely selected group of 15 Leeds University students, so the results can hardly represent the general reasons behind the students’ choices. It was further revealed that those interviewed students who chose the option of an accented international intelligibility had done so because they see it as practically impossible to achieve native-speaker accent, but not because of their preference for the more general goal of intelligibility. The results of the teacher’s responses showed that 27% of teachers preferred to have a native-like accent, 39% would prefer international intelligibility with features of foreign accent, and 34% have no preference. It can be deduced from these results that teachers have a greater tendency to view ‘accented intelligibility’ as a preferred goal for pronunciation competence, but as in the case with students, many of them selected the option because it was a more realistic goal rather than more desirable: “Of course Student A is preferable but in reality it is impossible to achieve so Student B can be a good standard” (p. 243). Some teachers also expressed a possible disadvantage of acquiring a native-speaker accent:
People have their own identities. Our job is not to produce little native speakers. My students are Chinese/Taiwanese, not Americans (p. 243). Many other researchers have articulated this assertion that the native-like accent can even be considered a liability after examination of the NNS-NNS and NNS-NS interactions. Motschenbacher, for example, says: In fact, it can be expected that a non-native speaker’s seemingly native American or British English accent is decoded as a sign of divergence from prototypical ELF patterns and therefore as an exaggerated or unnecessary form of assimilation to Anglophone cultures (2013, p. 90). This issue is connected to the accent as being part of one’s identity, and will be discussed more thoroughly in the next chapter. Those teachers who expressed no preference usually supported their choice by stating that they try to comply with the wishes of their students and make their choice according to the context of the students’ use of English. The responses from Timmis’ research also showed that many teachers believe students should be able to understand authentic (sometimes grammatically incorrect) language and speech with various accents, therefore they made a distinction between reception and production. The results further demonstrate that even though the majority of students stated their goal was to be able to communicate, they still adhere to the standard language ideology with native speaker norms; however, as Timmis notes, they might have “an idealized notion of what these norms are” (p. 248). In the conclusion, Timmis compares his findings with Jenkins’ and suggests that the ascertained attitudes are inevitably context-sensitive, and this could account for the contrast in their results. While Jenkins claims that “the majority express a desire to retain something of their L1” (Jenkins, 1997), Timmis’ findings don’t support this claim. One of the possible reasons for this dissimilarity could be the sample group’s previous awareness of the issues in question. It has been stated before that an awareness of the sociolinguistic issues connected to the use of English as an international language can raise the learners’ confidence and acceptance of their own variety as well as other varieties. It is therefore the role of the language teachers to further educate and inform their students about these issues and to take into account their aspirations towards a selected model informed by their previous reflection on the issue. Then, if they aim for a nativelike rather than a local or internationally-acceptable accent, the teacher should respect their decision, even if this presents a hardly attainable goal. Those findings were supported by other researchers. Sung (2015), for example, conducted a similar research into learners’ perspectives at a university in Hong Kong, but focused on their perceived usefulness of being exposed to multiple accents in the classroom. He found out that the students have rather ambivalent attitudes; while they appreciated the exposure in theory, they didn’t show such appreciation in practice. Some students expressed reservations for such practice due to their negative attitudes towards certain varieties, because of the doubts of its practical value for their language acquisition, or because of a possible negative effect leading to confusion regarding the acquisition of ‘standard’ pronunciation. These reactions are very much expected from learners who were had been taught according to the standard language ideology. Therefore, before implementing such practices in the classroom, it is important to broaden the students’ perspectives. Sung then puts forward some suggestions on how to best introduce the variety of non-standard accents in the classroom. Those include: a careful selection of listening material based on accents the learners are likely to encounter in their lives (therefore being motivating for the students), presenting learners with tasks involving careful examination of phonological variations among speakers from different background, such as phonetic transcription (See, for example, Radwanska-Williams, 2003), and lastly, introducing the learners to the sociolinguistic reality of English use around the world. This approach would essentially challenge the negative stereotypes about non-native English and could lead to a greater learners’ tolerance towards English varieties in the globalized world. In sum, this chapter provided an alternative view of the pronunciation goals for non-native speakers who engage in international communication in English. The standard ideology of the native speaker as a model for English instruction is an approach which is repeatedly challenged by the scholars and to dwell on such approach might now seems not only unpractical, but also inappropriate. A variety of meaningful tasks for the use in pronunciation instruction in the language classrooms are now being proposed to promote the diversity of the global language.
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