study "On Paragraphs Featuring Direct Speech" examines a corpus of academic,
journalistic and fiction registers for the incidence of paragraphs displaying direct
speech. Using a number of parameters, it proposes their typology, delimiting
their centre and periphery, and exploring their register-specific characteristics.
Gabriela Míššíkovás contribution "Tracing British Tradition in Stylistics" gives
a commented survey on the most significant tendencies in English stylistics
from Iacobsons formalism to the present. The survey pursues the introduction
of discursive, contextual and pragmatics aspects into the stylistic analysis of
Iiterary texts and is therefore a bridge between the Iinguistic and Iiterary sections
of this volume.
Libuše Dušková
Tangibility of Foreign Accents in Speech: the Case
of Czech English
Radek Skarnitzl, Jan Volín, Leona Drenková
Charles University, Prague
.Abstract
The existing descriptions
of foreign accented speech are generally
impressionistic and intuitive. Therefore, they do not provide a firm base for
unprejudiced conclusions about the impact of foreign accents in natural
communication. However, the question whether the role of foreign accents is
overestimated or underestimated is important both in the field of technological
applications (speech synthesis and automatic recognition) and in the sphere of
EFL teaching objectives. Presently, Czech English is used in a two-stage survey
of consistency in evaluation of the foreign element in pronunciation. This study
provides empirical indicators ofhow compact the effect of foreign accentedness
is.
1. Introduction
Debates about foreign accents in speech are quite probably as old as foreign
language acquisition itself. This is because foreign language acquisition and
foreign accents go most of the time hand in hand. After a certain age or rather a
certain degree of brain maturation, only a few exceptionally gífted learners can
achieve native-like pronunciation of their newly acquired language (see, 'e.g.,
Flege 1998, 1; Pinker 1995, 316; Patkovski 1994,216).
It is not the goal of this study to discuss what is and what is not a foreign
accent. Nigerian English sounds quite different from Southern British Standard,
10
11
yet it is not necessarily perceived as foreign accented when spoken in Nigeria,
where it serves as an officiallanguage for the 260 ethnic groups living there. In
the present study, we are interested in Czech English and we label it as foreign
accented due to the pragmaticaIly based aspirations of our learners of English
and due to the general purpose of the English language in the context of our
geographical and geopolitical position.
Opinions on the foreign accent role in speech usuaIly oscillate between two
extremes. A number of individuals believe that a foreign accent is something
undesirable, something that should be defeated at any price. Others hail it as a
sign of national and personal identity. Since extremes have been recognized as
destructive in both human and natural history, we have to be equally suspicious
about them in the case of foreign accents. Unfortunately, the matter is commonly
discussed within a broader philosophical, and recently even political framework,
which reduces the chances of an objective outcome. What is needed instead is an
honest, empiricaIly supported, and politically unbiased answer to the question
of the foreign accent impact in speech communication.
A recent wave ofliberalism has brought about the idea that any accent is good
as long as communicating individuals are able to decipher each other's messages
(further details in Šimáčková 2004, or Gill2003). Communication, however, is
not only about understanding words. It is also about acceptance, commitment
and trust. This is where foreign accentedness might play its inconspicuous role.
It would be highly irresponsible to try to ignore the matter since wishful thinking
cannot remove the potential consequences of communicative hitches. Even if
we decide to ignore recommendations of both older (e.g., O'Connor 1980, 4)
and younger (e.g., Hancock 2003, 6) generations of phoneticians, who believe
that systematic training in pronunciation improves both listening and speaking
skills, we still have to answer the question of how foreign accentedness affects
the process of communication in its complexity.
Within modern social structures it is imperative to teach tolerance towards
foreign accents as they are difficult to change and they do not pose any serious
danger. At the same time, we must not ignore existent mechanisms of speech
perception, which are mostly outside the command of our wiIl. If there are any
effects of foreign accents in communication, they have to be discovered and
thoroughly described. This is what we, researchers, owe to our EFL learners, even
if our desire is to find out that the impact of foreign accents is negligible.
The starting point of foreign accent research is to investigate whether the given
accent is perceived similarly by various listeners. If no consistency in perception
of the Czech accent of English is found, then we can conclude that any attempt
to influence the accent is misdirected. The null hypothesis, therefore, should be
formulated as follows.
Ho: There is no agreement between individuallisteners
as to the impression
they get when they listen to identical Czech English recordings and are asked
to concentrate on foreign accentedness.
Of course, our alternative hypothesis in the present paper counted on some
consistency in the perception of Czech English and we were interested in its
extent. The research was carried out in two stages with ample material in order
to provide reliable conclusions.
2. Method - Stage I
128 students ofEnglish studies (89 females and 39 males) were recorded while
reading out news bulletins originally broadcast by the BBC World Service. The
texts were printed in sufficiently large fonts (Times New Roman 13 pt) and
organized in paragraphs. Students had enough time prior to the recording to
read the texts through and prepare difficult passages. The recordings were made
in a soundproofbooth
with a studio electret microphone IMG ECM 2000 and
digitized at the sampling rate of 22,050 Hz. 26 recordings were later excluded
because of non-Czech origin of the readers or damaged sound tracks.
One paragraph of the news was extracted from each of the recordings. The
paragraph was neither initial nor final in the news bulletin. It consisted of about
80 words and lasted 35 to 40 seconds to read.
Each of the 102 extracts was subjected to an independent evaluation as to
the degree of Czech accent by the three authors of this study. The process of
evaluation rested in marking the extracts with grades A, B, or C, where A
categorized the extract as a native-like or near native-like accent, C as an evident
Czech accent, and B as an ambiguous accent, l.e., neither a clear Czech accent
nor ne ar native-like one. There were two important moments in the evaluation
procedure. First, each of the evaluators listened to the extracts in a different order
to avoid a combination of the succession effect. Second, after each sample, the
evaluator had to take a one-minute rest, during which he or she had to utter a
few words with the aim of neutralizing the influence of the processed recording
on the next sample.
3. Results - Stage I
From the 102 extracts analyzed in Stage I, the evaluators reached complete
agreement in 60 cases. As expected, the match was greatest for group B - 48
cases (35 females and 13 males). There were 9 matches for group C (7 females
and 2 males), and 3 matches for group A (all females).
'
It should be pointed out that in the remaining 42 cases, the difference
between the three evaluations never exceeded one grade; the grades for one
speaker were always A and B, or Band C - never A and C. The three evaluators
12
13
to ok notes during their listening, and a follow-up discussion revealed that the
disagreement often involved identical cases - that all three were hesitating,
for instance, between Band C for one speaker, but two decided for B, while
the other one for C.
(nearly) native-like accent
ambiguous accent
r--JA....
- ....__
.,.A.... _
Czech accent
with increasing degree
__ .,.A.... _
4. Method - Stage II
aut of 60 samples in which all three evaluators reached complete agreement
about the degree of accentedness, 16 were retained for further study. AU the
9 cases of unambiguous C (clear Czech accent) and a1l3 cases of A (near nativelike accent), and 4 cases of B (ambiguous accent) were selected. Four of the
extracts were copied so as to verify inner consistency of the respondents and
the resulting 20 samples were used to prepare three equivalent versions of a
perception test, differing only in the random order of presentation of the stimuli.
Again, the objective was to neutralize the succession effect. A short silent pause
and a few bars of unintrusive music were pasted to the end of each sample to
desensitize the respondents before listening to the subsequent case.
The test was administered to 20 respondents who could be divided into two
groups. One involved ten native speakers of English (British and American)
who have lived in the Czech Republic for at least two years and had experience
with Czech English, the second consisted of ten Czech proficient speakers of
English. The respondents were instructed and tested individually. Instruction
was given in a uniform manner. The task was to estimate the degree of Czech
accent in each of the extracts. The respondents were instructed to grade each of
the extracts (speakers) with a mark from the scale of 1-5 where 1 was a grade
classifying an accent nearly identical or quite similar to an accent spoken in a
country where English is the native language. Grades 3, 4, and 5 marked Clech
accent with increasing degree (grade 5 marking the strongest degree of Czech
accent). Thus, the previous category C was split into three subcategories and
a more subtle classification of Czech accent was obtained. Grade 2 marked an
ambiguous accent in terms of degree. Exceptionally, grade 2 also included cases
of an accent which was perceived as clearly foreign, but not Czech.
The respondents were instructed to focus onlyon the speakers' pronunciation
in their evaluations, in other words, to disregard the quality of their reading (e.g.,
slips ofthe tongue, hesitation sounds). The shrnuli were played into THOMSON
hed750 headphones. The respondents were aUowed to listen to one extract as
many times as necessary, but they were asked not to return to a speaker they
had already decided on, and not to compare the speakers to each other. During
the listening, the respondents had a visual reminder of the meaning of each
category, as shown in Figure 1. Each subject recorded his/her answers by writing
a number on an answer sheet.
1
Figure 1. Visual reminder which the respondents could consult during
listening.
5. Results - Stage II
Table 1 shows how the initial evaluation from Stage I coincides with the
respondents' evaluation in Stage II. For the sake of comparison, the grades from
Stage I have been converted to numbers. Speakers who were graded A thus have
a score of 1.0, speakers who were graded B have a score of2.0, while those with
a C have a score of 3.0. This conversion is allowed by the fact that category A
of Stage I equals grade 1 in Stage II, category B is defined in exactly the same
manner as grade 2, while only category C applies finer internal division of clearly
Czech-accented speech.
The speakers are ordered as per Stage I evaluation. The first two columns
compare Stage I and Stage II evaluation, while the third and fourth columns
break Stage II evaluation down according to the mother tongue of the evaluator,
i.e., they give the average score of each speaker obtained from the native and
Czech respondents.
The average scores indicate that there is considerable agreement between Stage
I and Stage II evaluation. We can see that both sets of scores are kept within
the same rank, i.e., no scores of 1.0 from Stage I exceed 2.0, scores of 2.0 from
Stage I all range between 2.0 and 3.0, and scores of 3.0 from Stage I are all 3.0
or higher.
However, when we look at the native and Czech respondents separately, we
can see that there is some overlap between the original three Stage I categories.
For example, there is an extreme case of speaker KPO from group C as per Stage
I evaluation who scored 2.3 with the native respondents. We willlook at these
tendencies below.
14
15
1.0
1.15
1.3
1.0
1.0
1.30
1.0
1.6
2.0
2.25
2.7
1.8
2.0
2.15
1.9
2.4
2.0
2.75
3.0
2.5
2.0
2.15
2.5
1.8
3.0
4.45
4.3
4.6
3.0
4.05
4.1
4.0
3.0
3.40
3.0
3.8
3.0
3.85
3.8
3.9
3.0
3.50
3.6
3.4
3.0
3.15
3.2
3.1
3.0
3.00
2.3
3.7
3.0
4.40
4.3
4.5
3.0
4.40
4.3
4.5
Table 1. The comparison of Stage I and Stage II evaluation (see text).
It appears that both native and Czech respondents are similarly dispersed
around the Stage I scores, and no group of respondents is consistently stricter or
more lenient. Some speakers received higher scores from the native respondents,
others from the Czech respondents, but all within reasonable distance from
Stage I scores. The same applies when we examine the average scores of each
group separately.
Naturally, it is necessary to go beyond the average scores. We found that the
respondents did not behave as a uniform group; there is not - and cannot be - a
single standard by which to judge the level of Czech accent in English. The
evaluations for one speaker may range, for instance, from 1 to 3 or from 2 to 5.
However, a doser examination of the results reveals that Stage II evaluation very
often does coincide with Stage I evaluation.
Tables 2 to 4 give, in the last column, the percentage of the match between
Stage I and Stage II evaluation. The speakers are divided as per Stage I evaluation,
allowing for easier comparison. We regarded our predictions as confirmed when
at least 75% of the respondents' evaluations matched Stage I evaluation.
16
Table 2 shows that the predictions were confirmed for seven out of the nine
speakers who were put into group C during Stage I (grades 3, 4, and 5 were all
eonsidered to mateh with group C). Three speakers - EMA, MPA, and SSA
_ were even assessed as dearly Czech by all twenty respondents. The remaining
rwo speakers in which the predictions were not confirrned, GMA and KPO,
were frequently judged, especially by the native speakers, to have a strong but
not Czech accent - Spanish and Arabic, respectively. They were thus frequently
plaeed into the "ambiguous" gro~p 2. That i~ also why these two sp~akers scored
on average considerably lower with the natíve respondents than with the Czech
respondents (Table 1). Although both these speakers are Czech, it is true that
they do sound less Czech than the other speakers in group C.
We can see that there is only one "outlier" within group C - speaker KLA
was judged by one respondent to be nearly native-like (grade 1). This particular
respondent tended to be markedly less strict than the others (cf Discussion
below).
8
3
9
100.0
8
3
70.0
6
90.0
C
6
3
C
2
5
7
C
3
5
11
85.0
C
4
6
9
75.0
C
10
4
2
4
50.0
C
2
8
10
100.0
C
2
20
18
100.0
Table 2. The mateh for group C of the respondents' evaluation with Stage I
evaluation.
As far as group A is concerned - i.e., the speakers whose accent was judged
as nearly native-like during Stage I - the predictions were confirmed for two of
the three speakers (Table 3). Speaker HNA scored a 3 four times.It is interesting
to note, though, that this only happened when speaker HNA, who has an
American accent, occurred in the listening experiment after speaker KCA, who
has a British accent. Three of these four respondents were either British or spoke
British English. In the other two listening arrangements, with a different order
17
of the items, speaker HNA scored 1eleven times and 2 three times. We therefore
argue for a possible bias ofBritish English in some respondents when evaluating
a speaker with an American accent.
Table 3. The match for group A of the respondents' evaluation with Stage I
evaluation.
There is again one "outlier" in group A - speaker KCA received a grade of 4
from one of the respondents. However, since speaker KCA was repeated in the
listening test, we may assume that this was accidental - the same respondent
gave this speaker grade 1 in the repeated listening.
The evaluations were least decisive for speakers who were placed into group
B during Stage I evaluation. Table 4 indicates that fewer than one half of the
respondents gave the speakers from group B the "ambiguous" grade of 2. That,
of course, was not unexpected, because the boundary of ambiguity differs with
each respondent. However, we can see that most of the evaluations do range
from 1 to 3.
Table 4. The match for group B of the respondents' evaluation with Stage I
evaluation.
4. Discussion
The results indicate that studying Czech English from the point of view of its
foreign accentedness is not a dead-end road. The impression of foreign accent
is subjective, but certainly not random. The initial evaluation from Stage I was
confirmed for nine out of twelve speakers from the extreme categories (A and C).
1he results are especially robust for speakers who were graded C during Stage I,
which concerns exactly the group which is of greatest importance for the present
study.
ln this section, we willlook beyond the results and analyze some inter- and
intra-respondent tendencies. We will specifically deal with the respondents'
consistency, with differences between native and Czech respondents, and
possibilities of biased judgments.
Since four of the twenty items in the test were repeated, it was possible to
check for the inner consistency of the respondents in their evaluations. From
the twenty respondents, twelve gave different grades to at least one speaker. The
total number ofinconsistencies was 22 (out of the 80 possible). 18 inconsistencies
díffered in one grade only (e.g., a speaker "scoreď' 3 and 4 with one respondent).
Given the impressionistic character of the task, this level of inconsistency is
relatively low.
We have already mentioned that there does not appear to be a significant
difference in the "strictness" of evaluations between the native respondents and
the proficient Czech respondents. On the one hand, one of the Czech respondents
gave a grade of 1to ten extracts (eight speakers). On the other hand, three native
respondents and one Czech respondent did not give grade 5 to any of the speakers.
Native speakers therefore do not appear to be stricter in their evaluation of foreign
accent than Czech speakers, or vice versa.
It is natural that the respondents behaved in different ways. Some of them,
within both the native and Czech groups, were - according to their own
admission - less experienced listeners than others. Since we tried to secure
the feeling of anonymity, we did not require personal information about the
respondents. Thus their individual profiles cannot serve as an independent
variable in the analysis. Moreover, it was not our objective to have a homogenous
group of respondents.
The results do show one noticeable, though predictable difference between
native and Czech respondents. Native respondents used the grade of2 much more
frequently than Czechs to indicate ambiguity in terms of provenience (especially
for speakers GMA and KPO, as discussed above). Eight of them used the grade
of2 for a foreign non-Czech accent, while onlythree Czech respondents did the
same. It is natural that native speakers have had more experience with various
foreign accents, and tend to hear them differently.
It became evident during Stage II that some evaluations may have been
biased for various reasons. Several respondents even mentioned this possibility
themselves. First of all, it is difficult, if not impossible with this type of material,
to factor out the fluency of the students' reading. Although the respondents
18
19
were explicitly asked to disregard fluency in their decisions, this factor may be
expected to play some part, though perhaps unconsciously.
ln spite of the short stretch of music which was inserted after each extract,
there is a high probability of order bias, combined with the bias of the native
or preferred language of the respondent. We have seen that some respondents
tended to judge a speaker with an American accent in a stricter way when this
speaker occurred after a speaker with a British accent.
Although it is not the main objective of this research, it would be interesting
to find out whether there might be a gender bias. For example, a female speaker
with quite good pronunciation may lead to the stricter evaluation of a following
male speaker with only slightly poorer pronunciation. Alternatively, there may
be some.interaction between the gender of the speaker and the respondent.
5. Conclusion
The null hypothesis was not confirmed. It turned out that the degree of foreign
accentedness is a tangible phenomenon which can be grasped empirically.
Making this issue a political one is not helpful at all because banning discussions
of foreign accents will not remove any of the problems they might potentially
cause. In the future, we hope to specify the impact of individual features of
Czech English on the whole proces s of communication. This might be useful
for specífyíng objectives in TEFL, as well as for the purpose of speech synthesis
and automatic speech recognition.
References
FLEGE, J.E., 1998. Second-Ianguage Learning: The Role ofSubject and Phonetic
Variables. In: Proceedings of Speech Technology in Language Learning 98.
Stockholm: ESCA, 1-8.
GILL, S., 2003. The Phonology ofEnglish as an International Language - review.
ATE Newsletter, 14 (1), 47-50.
HANCOCK, M., 2003. English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
O'CONNOR, J.D., 1980. Better English Pronunciation,
Second Edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
PATKOWSKI, M.S., 1994. The Critical Age Hypothesis and Interlanguage
Phonology. In: M. YAVAS,ed., First and Second Language Phonology. San
Diego: Singular, 205-221.
PINKER, S., 1995. The Language Instinct. London: Penguin.
ŠIMÁČKOVÁ, Š., 2003. Lingua Franca Core? Jako model pro výuku angličtiny ve
školách? A presentation given at: 4. mezinárodní setkání mladých lingvistů,
Olomouc.
Terminography - A Neglected Disciplineř
Alice Brabcová
University oj West Bohemia, Plzeň
The present paper deals with the current state of Czech bilingual terminography
in both of its aspects - methodological research as well as the actual making of
terminological dictionaries. On closer inspection of the situation, an interesting
paradox can be observed: although the production of various Czech -English and
English-Czech terminological dictionaries (covering the fields oflaw, business,
technology, medicine, etc.) is currently witnessing an unprecedented boom, this
development is not supported by a corresponding amount of theoretical work.
The implications of this state of affairs are self-evident.
The Department ofEnglish Language and Literature at the University ofWest
Bohemia, where this paper has been researched, is heavily involved in applied
linguistics, and the use of terminological dictionaries is very common. However,
when checking the students' work, the teachers frequently encounter rather
peculiar translations from and into English. While these shortcomings can to
some extent be caused by the lack of language skills on the part of the students,
there is no doubt that at least some of them are due to the insufficient treatment of
individual dictionary entries. Clearly, the dictionaries are failing at least in some
of their functions. The quantity mentioned in the first paragraph is, sadly, not
matched by quality. There can be several factors responsible or this; for example,
the sheer commercial motivation of some terminographical projects, leading to
hasty compilation of reference works which are little more than bare word lists
with the corresponding equivalents. Yet this trend is exacerbated by another fact
- the absence of expert literature in Czech which would teach terminographers
how to write good dictionaries.
In Western countries, terminography is being paid a great deal of attention,
although, admittedly, not as much as generallexicography. Danish and Dutch
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