The question of intelligibility and the pronunciation models debate

Throughout the whole thesis, the reference accent to which the features of Hunglish will be compared is Received Pronunciation (RP),²⁸ with General American (GA) also mentioned whenever it differs markedly from RP. (Also, wherever the label “English” is used, it refers to these two standard pronunciation varieties.) However, the fact that the variety serving as the point of reference for a learner should be a standard (or even a native) one is not obvious in the field of language learning in general, but perhaps it is even less so in pronunciation acquisition.

This brings our discussion to the question of pronunciation models, which is one of the most controversial issues surrounding non-native accents.

Although the questions related to the goal of pronunciation learning and the entire pronunciation model debate are not relevant to any of the discussions throughout this thesis, we cannot avoid providing a brief account of these issues for at least two reasons. Firstly, the term

“intelligible” (or “unintelligible”) will quite frequently be (in fact, it has already been) used in various parts of the dissertation, which requires some clarification as to what exactly is meant by intelligible pronunciation, and this is directly linked to the question concerning pronunciation models. Secondly, an overview of all these issues, no matter how short, will contribute to a better understanding of the situation in Hungary with respect to language teaching, and thus the ways in which a Hungarian learner’s English pronunciation is shaped throughout the learning process.

The debates surrounding pronunciation models are rooted in the fact that English is spoken all around the world and has a vast number of varieties, native and non-native alike.

This has been described by Kachru’s (1986) famous model, according to which the global spread of English can be illustrated by three concentric circles: the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle and the Expanding Circle. Areas belonging to the Inner Circle (which, as its name suggests, is the one located in the middle of Kachru’s diagram) are the ones where English is spoken as an L1 and from where English has spread around the world – namely the British Isles, the US, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. The Outer Circle comprises certain parts of Africa and Asia (such as Nigeria and India), where English has an official status (i.e., it is the language of education, law, etc.), and is thus spoken as an L2. The outermost circle, called The Expanding Circle, is where English is used as an FL (so basically, the third circle represents the rest of the world).

28 This is true of both the potential features of Hunglish discussed in Chapter 3 and the empirical data to be presented in Chapter 5.

The question of which variety will be taught as the norm in language education largely depends on which of the three circles a learning situation belongs to: as pointed out by Szpyra-Kozłowska (2015: 9), while in the Outer Circle certain local varieties²⁹ have become the norm, in the Expanding Circle native varieties, usually one of the British or the American standard, have been used as the variety to be taught to learners. Whether it is British English (and thus RP) or American English (and thus GA) that is to be chosen is (at least partly) influenced by geographical distance from England or the US (Szpyra-Kozłowska (2015: 9) – this is what explains that in Europe (and thus in Hungary too), the book market was flooded by British publishers, and therefore a Hungarian learner’s pronunciation is likely to be shaped predominantly by RP. It is of course possible that GA affects a Hungarian learner’s accent through films and other forms of media, however, considering all the characteristics of the learning setting (as described in Section 1.2.2), we can still expect RP to be more dominant.

The fact that RP is the norm taught in the EFL classroom in Hungary, however, does not mean that this is the variety the learners are exposed to in the EFL classroom to the largest extent. Firstly, it is the teacher (who has a non-native accent of English) who serves as the primary pronunciation model (cf. Section 1.2.2). Secondly, language course books seem to have adopted the view that the importance of native norms has significantly declined with the global spread of English: the accents featured in listening activities in contemporary course books are not always native models, but various non-standard and even non-native accents are represented in the sound recordings, and standard models are retained only in activities focussing on production.

The fact that non-native users of English have vastly outnumbered native ones, and no native speakers are involved in much of the communication in English today³⁰ has led to the realisation that instead of aiming to acquire a native-like pronunciation,³¹ the goal of pronunciation teaching and learning should be no more than to achieve mutual intelligibility between the speakers. As a consequence, increased attempts have been made to reconsider pronunciation teaching along the new realisations (e.g., Thir 2016).

29 These local varieties used as the norm in education in the Outer Circle came to be referred to as “New Englishes”.

30 That is, English is used today as a “lingua franca” (i.e., as a means of communication mainly between non-native speakers of the language).

31 This view is referred to as the “nativeness principle” (cf. Levis 2005).

Although intelligibility (also referred to as comprehensibility)³² had been in the centre of attention much earlier than these views on the goals of pronunciation instruction were expressed (cf., e.g., Kenworthy 1987), Jenkins’s (2000) description of the pronunciation of English as an international language served as an important milestone in the pronunciation models debate.

Jenkins proposed the idea of a “Lingua Franca Core”, which comprises those properties of English pronunciation that are important to acquire in order to achieve mutual intelligibility.

These properties are therefore to be seen as the priorities in pronunciation teaching and learning, and the features that are outside the core are not important to acquire as they do not hinder intelligibility between the interlocutors. Examples of features belonging to the core are aspirated voiceless stops and pre-fortis clipping, while the correct pronunciation of the interdental fricatives and that of dark-L are outside of the core. A more detailed account of the Lingua Franca Core is not relevant to our purposes, however, it is obvious even from a few examples that the collection of features belonging to the core does not seem to (fully) coincide with the properties which are able to express meaning contrasts. This may have had a role in that Jenkins’s idea has received widespread criticism, but it is beyond the scope of the discussion here to delve more deeply into the debates, let alone critically evaluate either the core itself or the criticism voiced against the idea. What is relevant to us is that concerns about native pronunciation models have received increased attention in the past two decades (cf. Kaur 2017, Munro 2008, Thomson 2015, etc.), and they inevitably influenced speakers of English in Hungary too (teachers and learners alike).

This closes the discussion of the basics of foreign accent in the light of Hunglish. In the next chapter, we turn to the features of Hunglish predictable from the phonetic and phonological differences between Hungarian and English, that is, the potential pronunciation errors a Hunglish speaker may make due to L1 transfer.

32 The terms intelligibility and comprehensibility are often used interchangeably, though a distinction is made sometimes between the two, the former referring to the recognition of individual words, and the latter to understanding the message of the whole utterance.