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
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 language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech |
Pages | 650-666 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Volume | 5 |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2014 |
Event | New Sounds 2013 : International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech - Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Duration: 17 May 2013 → 19 May 2013 |
Publication series
Name | Concordia working Papers in Applied Linguistics |
---|---|
ISSN (Print) | 2292-4248 |
Conference
Conference | New Sounds 2013 : International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech |
---|---|
Country/Territory | Canada |
City | Montreal |
Period | 17/05/13 → 19/05/13 |