The Hong Kong English accent : judgements by listeners in Britain

Jane SETTER, Andrew SEWELL, Chris RYDER

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference ProceedingsConference paper (refereed)Researchpeer-review

Abstract

Studies of attitudes towards the Hong Kong English accent conclude that Hong Kong has a strongly exonormative orientation with little sign of endonormative stabilization. Hong Kong teachers of English still have a strong orientation towards (British or American) native-like accents in terms of acceptability and intelligibility.

Sewell’s (2012) accent survey involving Hong Kong speakers and listeners using both questionnaire and error/variant-identification tasks concluded that the phonological features of accents are important determinants of listener responses, suggesting that local accents may be acceptable if they do not contain certain salient features of the Hong Kong English phonological inventory. In addition, an apparent correspondence between the acceptability and intelligibility characteristics of features was noted.

This paper presents a partial replication of Sewell’s research using British listeners, indicating that, while there is not a great deal of diversity of opinion in terms of acceptability of accents, different issues affect listeners’ ratings of intelligibility
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech
Pages650-666
Number of pages17
Volume5
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2014
EventNew Sounds 2013 : International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech - Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Duration: 17 May 201319 May 2013

Publication series

NameConcordia working Papers in Applied Linguistics
ISSN (Print)2292-4248

Conference

ConferenceNew Sounds 2013 : International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityMontreal
Period17/05/1319/05/13

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