English Pronunciation Models in a Globalized World

Accent, Acceptability and Hong Kong English

Andrew Sewell

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317702573
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Languages & Linguistics
• Categoría: Grammar & Punctuation

This book explores the topics of English accents and pronunciation. It highlights their connections with several important issues in the study of English in the world, including intelligibility, identity, and globalization. The unifying strand is provided by English pronunciation models: what do these models consist of, and why? The focus on pronunciation teaching is combined with sociolinguistic perspectives on global English, and the wider question asked by the book is: what does it mean to teach English pronunciation in a globalized world? The book takes Hong Kong – 'Asia's World City' – as a case study of how global and local influences interact, and of how decisions about teaching need to reflect this interaction. It critically examines existing approaches to global English, such as World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca, and considers their contributions as well as their limitations in the Hong Kong context. A data-based approach with quantitative and qualitative data anchors the discussion and assists in the development of criteria for the contents of pronunciation models. English Pronunciation Models in a Globalized World: Accent, Acceptability and Hong Kong English discusses, among other issues:

• Global English: A socio-linguistic toolkit
• Accents and Communication: Intelligibility in global English
• Teaching English Pronunciation: The models debate
• Somewhere Between: Accent and pronunciation in Hong Kong

Researchers and practitioners of English studies and applied linguistics will find this book an insightful resource.

1 Introduction

Soundings in global English

‘Hong Kong’ evokes images: skyscrapers around the harbour, buildings ranged between verdant hills. Colourful neon signs in traditional Chinese characters, global brand names in Roman script. Street signs in Chinese and English, with Chinese increasing as you move from centre to periphery, from Central to the outlying districts. Hong Kong’s branding as ‘Asia’s world city’ appears to be justified. In Central, the international employees of international organizations share mall space with shoppers from mainland China. If the wind blows in the right direction you might see a container ship entering or leaving the Kwai Chung terminal on the Kowloon side. There is plenty of visual evidence of globalization, of ‘flows of goods, capital, people and information’ (Held et al. 1999).

Switching from image to sound: listening to the voices and languages, beyond the confines of Central, one might first notice the predominance of Cantonese in this city of seven million, worldly as it is. In the windowless classroom of an after-hours English school, a primary school student stands up:

Standing at the front of the classroom in Hong Kong, nine-year-old Charlotte Yan recites a 2008 speech by Hillary Clinton – enunciating the words with a perfect American accent. ‘Make sure we have a president who puts our country back on the path to peace, prosperity, and progress,’ says Yan, her brow furrowed as she concentrates intensely on her pronunciation.

(South China Morning Post 2013)

In itself this is not a particularly unusual scene, and similar ones are probably taking place in English classes in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing and other Asian metropolises. The story introduces and illustrates the theme of interconnectedness that runs through this book: ‘local’ individuals and ‘local’ classrooms are influenced by global processes and flows. Students are exposed to many kinds of English, in mediated forms and in their diverse communities. Identities reflect the influences of the local and the global, of real and imagined communities. The ‘outside’ enters the classroom, and makes the very nature of the ‘local’, and the ‘individual’, more complex. Accent and pronunciation are among the most noticeable linguistic phenomena that reveal the interplay of the local and the global, and of the individual and the social.

In this introductory chapter I use the metaphor of ‘soundings’ to evoke the ways in which issues related to accent and pronunciation can be used to gauge the contours of other phenomena. For example, although the commodification of accents is one of the predictable outcomes of globalization, the ‘accent school’ story reveals how it is not simply a matter of ready-made ‘accents’ flowing around the globe. Perception is everything, and both the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ are transformed by their encounter with each other. After reading this story I watched the accompanying video and listened to the different English accents it contained. The story focuses on the question of whether ‘British’ accents are becoming less popular than ‘American’ ones in Hong Kong, but neither of these accents could be heard very often. The local interviewees had different kinds of Cantonese-inflected ‘Hong Kong English’ accents, at least from my analytical perspective. One of the interviewees maintained that ‘we can understand both, but for what we speak we will speak the British accent’ – again with what was for me an immediately recognizable Hong Kong accent. The difference in perception raises questions such as: what counts as a ‘British’ or ‘American’ accent, for different audiences? The story suggests that the accent label ‘British’ may have been locally appropriated. It seems to involve relative distinction, and what counts as ‘British’ for local speakers may not count as ‘British’ for others.

The fluid, contested nature of accent and pronunciation soon becomes apparent, and is thrown into sharper relief by the effects of global flows. Accent is one of the most noticeable semiotic displays available to human beings, and pronunciation is ‘perhaps the linguistic feature most open to judgment’ (Canagarajah 2005: 365). It might be expected that as digitally mediated communication becomes more common, the scope for ‘face to face’ interaction is correspondingly reduced. Logically, accent should then become less important. But one of the many paradoxes of globalization is that increasing mobility, and decreasing predictability, may actually create more scope for judgements of identity to be based on accent. Kroskrity (2000: 112) observes that in ‘circumstances where little is known about the other’s biographical identity, interactants must provide in the here-and-now the communicative symbols by which they will be assessed as persons’. Texts may have voices, but people speak, advertising their selfhood with every sound, syllable and word.

The noticeability of accent, its social resonance, explains why accent-related stories appear so frequently in media discourse relating to language. As an introduction to the topic, it is both instructive and interesting to consult examples of this discourse. Among other things, we soon realize that despite changes in the ‘outer’ world, the way we deal with accent in our ‘inner’ worlds has not changed very much. We learn that stories about ‘accent’ are also stories about other things. In May 2014, a Cantonese-speaking politician in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (or LegCo) chamber switched to English in order to criticize the conduct of a transport authority executive. What caught the attention of commentators was not what he said, but the way that he said it: his Cantonese English accent and non-standard grammar were held up as examples of ‘the decline of English standards’ (Lo 2014). The speaker’s pronunciation of the word ‘shame’, thought to sound like ‘shave’ by the same commentator, was given as an example of such ‘abuse’, along with accent-related infractions committed by other politicians. Unusually, the politician responded to criticism by saying that ‘everyone speaks with an accent’ (Lo 2014), thus aligning himself squarely with the descriptive orthodoxy of sociolinguistics: all varieties of English are equal (Doerr 2009: 195).

The incident was far from being merely a matter of pronunciation, of the difference between consonants. It has to be seen as a question of identity: in its individual and collective dimensions, and in the way in which it is achieved by oneself or ascribed by others (Blommaert 2005: 205–6). The relationship between accent and identity is one of the major themes of this book, which seeks to uncover the social significance of accent and relate this to pedagogical concerns. In doing so it recognizes the centrality of identity in language use in general (Joseph 2004), as well as its importance in language learning (Norton 2000).

In addition, the ‘LegCo story’ has to be seen as a clash of language ideologies, involving questions of the legitimacy of particular forms of English. The social significance of accent cannot be understood without considering these ideologies, which place linguistic behaviour ‘firmly within an animating cultural context’ (Seargeant 2009: 22). Voloshinov famously observed that the pronunciation of a single word represents the dynamic interplay of historical and social currents, and therefore becomes ‘a little arena for the clash and criss-crossing of differently-oriented social accents. A word in the mouth of an individual is a product of the living interaction of social forces’ (Voloshinov 1973: 41).

Clark and Holquist (1984: 220) note how in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, the young Russian radicals pronounce the word for ‘principles’ as printsip, as opposed to the ‘soft French way’ (principe) preferred by the older conservatives. This difference between consonants, between possible ways of pronouncing a word, brought into the open ‘the major political and intellectual conflicts of the 1860s in Russia’. In Hong Kong, accent-related incidents and stories such as those above reveal conflicts and tensions along generational, social, and possibly political lines; in the current political climate it is not far-fetched to believe that an accent perceived as too ‘foreign’ might not be a desirable attribute for a pro-establishment politician.

To focus on accent and pronunciation is thus to explore the complex and conflicted nature of language use, from both speakers’ and listeners’ perspectives. But these conflicts do not only occur between groups and individuals; the tensions and contradictions of globalization are increasingly manifested within individuals. The study of Baratta (2014) suggests that many British people have felt the need to shed their regional accents as they pursue social and geographic mobility. This often occurs in response to overt or covert accent discrimination (called ‘accentism’ by Baratta). Conflict at the ‘outer’ level is reflected in conflict at the ‘inner’ level, and far from being a natural, chameleon-like adaptation, changing one’s accent is seen to inflict psychological damage. Commenting on this study, a British newspaper columnist described his experience of accent change in an article entitled ‘I want my accent back’:

I do hugely regret having lost my [Welsh] accent and joined the superficially posh set. I would love to sound like Richard Burton and bore people to death by drunkenly reciting my awful, verbose poetry in pubs. Leaving Wales for England, swapping animated working class for anaemic middle class, losing the accent – it all added up to deracination. Perfect for journalism, but damaging for life.

(Moss 2014)

The article’s title suggests nostalgia and longing not only for an authentic accent, but also for an authentic personality and way of being in the world. The widespread media discussion of Baratta’s study was characterized by appeals to a ‘real’, ‘original’ or ‘natural’ accent, with change and hybridity implicitly portrayed as unnatural, undesirable and as something that can ‘undermine your sense of being’ (Baratta, cited in Moss 2014). Moss’s self-perceived accent hybridity is a cause for regret, and he feels himself to be ‘not quite English’. This is despite the fact that some of the personalities mentioned – the actor Richard Burton, in this case – seem to exemplify change and hybridity in terms of their biographies.

The nature of ‘hybridity’ is problematic in these discussions, as it raises the dubious possibility of ‘purity’; nevertheless, such concerns are a staple of metalinguistic discourse pertaining to language and accent. As well as further illustrating the contested status of accent phenomena, and their importance for self-identity, this story illustrates another important fact about ‘accent’ in such discourse. It quickly takes on an associative and metaphorical role, so that wider (and deeper) issues of identity, class identification and social mobility are represented at the linguistic level by ‘changing accent’.

To a large extent this is true of all metalinguistic discussion; Deborah Cameron’s (1995) concept of verbal hygiene expresses the way in which the linguistic order often becomes a metaphor for a real or imagined social order. But once again, the noticeability of accent makes it a frequent trigger and conduit for such discussion. Another speaker who shows accent hybridity in a situational sense is Barack Obama, whose ability to switch from the accent and language of a ‘soaring, formal inaugural address’ to that of ‘a black man comfortable in black Chicago’ has been widely noted (The Economist 2013). This flexibility has earned him popularity as well as charges of using a ‘false’ or ‘fake’ accent. Hybridity and change may be seen as desirable or necessary by some, but as regrettable or even repugnant by others. The pronunciation of a word may pass unnoticed, or it may be perceived as a symptom of falling standards and wider social malaise. Concerns about language and accent change map onto concerns about hybridity, change and difference in everyday life. To a large extent these phenomena have always existed, but the accelerated changes and movements wrought by globalization have their own correlates in accent and in discussions about accent.

Accent-related stories became more ominous as the preparation of this book progressed, further illustrating the global forces underlying ‘local’ discussions of accent and pronunciation. In the Middle East, the mediatised killings of Americans by a British citizen – dubbed ‘Jihadi John’ by some newspapers – served as a focus for worldwide attention, leading to political responses and eventual military action. Accent played a prominent role in the unfolding events. It was highly significant that Jihadi John spoke with a British accent, variously described as ‘east London’, ‘south London’ or ‘multicultural’, and media discussion again illustrates how the themes noted above – identity, local/global interconnectedness, contested perceptions and the potential for metaphorical transfer or ‘verbal hygiene’ – relate to accent. For example, some media sources used the term ‘multicultural’ to describe Jihadi John’s accent. In descriptive sociolinguistic terms, the label suggests the kind of hybrid or ‘crossing’ accents identified in London by Rampton (2005). But in media discourse, it may also have represented a desire to problematize ‘multicultural’, transnational or religious identity, vis-à-vis traditional, ‘boundaried’ views of national identity.

The concepts of linguists, and the approaches of language educators, have also been affected by the upheavals of globalization. Amid the general interrogation of borders and boundaries, there has been a widespread questioning of ‘bounded’ concepts, such as bounded languages (Makoni and Pennycook 2007) and their association with bounded territories or communities (e.g. Canagarajah 2013). Combined with a poststructuralist view of ‘identity’ that emphasizes fluidity (e.g. Maher 2005; Norton 2014), traditional concepts such as ‘code-switching’ and ‘code-mixing’ are also brought into question by these recalibrations. In discussing Barack Obama’s accent modifications and arguing for an expanded view of the term, Demby (2013) observes that:

[w]e’re looking at code-switching a little more broadly: many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves all the time. We’re hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities – sometimes within a single interaction.

In pronunciation teaching, one of the most notable effects of globalization has been a vigorous debate about the most appropriate ‘models’: native speaker, ‘local’ or transnational ‘lingua franca’. The debate has not always fully questioned the viability of these labels, however. Their nature and relevance in the age of globalization is one of the main practical concerns of this book.

Focus and aims

Many more examples could be given to illustrate the areas of interest outlined above: the importance of accent and pronunciation in language use and language learning; the interrelationships between accent and identity; the existence of contested perceptions regarding ‘accent’, and their ideological correlates; and over and above all this, the interconnectedness of these issues at local and global levels. These are wide-ranging topics, and the immediate requirement is for delimitation. There are two focusing devices in this book, one practical and the other geographical. The practical focus is on pronunciation teaching, and the book asks: what does it mean to teach English pronunciation in a globalized world? What are the possibilities, when there is such enormous variation and so little consensus as to the nature of ‘English’? One of the central arguments of this book is that so-called ‘local’ pronunciation teaching cannot take place without considering its translocal, global dimensions. These include the ways in which English is used in communication, the ways it is represented in mediated discourse, and the ways it relates to the issues of identity and belonging highlighted in the accent-related stories above. These dimensions are complex, but they cannot be ignored. As Derwing (2008: 348) argues, the ‘milieu’ in which students find themselves is ‘critical in designing a curriculum that adequately addresses pronunciation needs’. The wider, sociolinguistic question then becomes: what is the nature of this milieu when, as Giddens (1991: 32) observes, ‘self’ and ‘society’ are linked in a milieu that is global, and for the first time in human history?

Partly to explore this milieu, the geographical focus of this book is on Hong Kong. Many sociolinguistic accounts of accent phenomena (e.g. Lippi-Green 1997) have concentrated on so-called ‘native speaker’ settings, but the focus here is on English as a language that shares a complex ‘language ecology’ (Mühlhäusler 1996) with other languages. Hong Kong makes for a particularly inte...