LING/ASIA 122: ENGLISH
AS A WORLD LANGUAGE - 11
Varieties of English: Sounds and
Rhythms
Based on: Kachru & Smith, Ch. 5
Weinberger
Esling
The Course Project
 Have you thought about it yet?
 Why not?
Some possible topics:
Speech acts across cultures (i.e.,, apologies,
refusals, correcting, etc.) – Discourse
completion tasks
Attitudes toward accents (e.g., foreign or
regional) – Matched Guise technique
Other topics of interest?
Mid-Term Exam Questions?
 What are the three theories that Rickford
describes for the rise of Ebonics? What evidence
is provided to support each?
 Discuss how Cunha and Hong (see course reader)
either assimilated to or resisted those
‘mainstream’ American values.
 According to Park, how does Korean English
reflect Korean language and culture?
 What are some features of Kenyan English,
according to Zuengler? What does her
examination of Kenyan English as presented in
literature tell us about Kenyan society?
In the previous chapter of
Kachru & Smith, we read about …
 The causes of misunderstanding
 Intelligibility
 Comprehensibility
 Interpretability
 Think about instances in which you could
not understand someone who spoke with
a foreign accent. What made it difficult to
understand?
The Emergence of “New Englishes”
The emergence of “New Englishes” is the
backdrop for linguistic features of non-native
varieties of English.
Salman Rushdie, “The English language ceased to be
the sole possession of the English some time ago.”
Within fifty years time, the only possible concept of
ownership regarding English will be a global one.
The emergence of new varieties of English in different
territories results in “new Englishes.”
Different dialects of British and American English are
examples of this.
The way English is spoken identifies one’s location,
region, and other factors.
Does it matter if we hear
someone with an accent?
 Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) and Ana
Kasparian discuss an interesting study from the
University of Chicago. The study asked people to
rate the believability of a statement when read
by people with different accents, and the results
are pretty unfortunate for non-native speakers.
Cenk also tells us how he avoids trouble in
airports despite being "brown skinned."
What causes foreign accents?
from: Steven Weinberger, 2006.
 Gileadites vs. Ephraimites
 ‘shibboleth’ > ‘sibboleth’
 ‘These things’ >
 /zeeze singz/ vs. /deeza tingz/ vs. /deese tinks/
 We transfer the sounds from our native language to our
second/foreign language
 Thai
 /dam/ ‘dark’, /tam/ ‘pound’, /tham/ ‘do, make’
 /mai/ ‘a lot’, /mài/ ‘new’, /mâi/ ‘not’, /mái/ ‘wood’, /mãi/ a
question particle
 Vietnamese, Thai, Tagalog /ng-/
Can we speak a foreign / second
language without an accent?
 The ‘critical period’ hypothesis
 Exceptions
 What are the disadvantages of speaking with a
‘foreign’ accent?
 What are the advantages, if any?
Question:
So what is the main reason people say,
“Everyone has an accent except me”?
 We learn to speak the way people around us
speak as we are acquiring language.
 So we don’t notice the way we speak until we
are confronted with people who speak
differently.
 When confronted with people who speak
differently, we may subconsciously adapt to
them by adjusting the way we speak
(accommodation).
 Or we may deliberately diverge from their way
of speaking (divergence).
Accommodation Theory
 As interlocutors get familiar with each other’s
system of phonological organization, they
accommodate their habitual patterns to
those of the other speaker(s).
National “Standard” Accent
Some countries have a standard accent
• Usually enjoy a higher social prestige
• In UK (Received Pronunciation), standard
French in France
Many countries have a broadcast for the media
• People feel that national standard is accentless,
but that non-standard speakers do have accents
Use of a particular group’s accent in broadcasting
gives a wider reach, but it’s no less an accent than
any other
Categorizing Accents
- We categorize , and stereotype, accents
according to what we have heard before
- “Our experience of perceiving the sounds of
human speech is very much a question of
‘agreeing’ with others to construct certain
categories and then place the sounds we
hear into them” - Co-construction of
reality (Esling 1998:171)
- Speech of colleagues seem ‘normal’; that of
a stranger stands out as different
Abercrombie’s Three Strands of
Accent (from Esling 1998: 172-72)
 Consonant and vowel sounds – e.g., degree of
aspiration of consonants, height of vowels, etc.
 Rhythm and intonation – beat (stress) patterns and
rises and falls of pitch patterns
 Voice quality – more or less permanent features of
voice, e.g., nasality, resonance, breathiness,
squeaky voice, etc.
Ways in which the English of
speakers from outer and expanding
circle contexts may differ from
that of inner circle speakers:
 Stress and rhythm
◦ Word stress
◦ Sentence stress
◦ Etc.
 Consonants and vowels
◦
◦
◦
◦
Spelling pronunciations
Consonant cluster simplification
Loss of vowel distinction
Etc.
Stress Patterns: Different values
attached to the mores
(weight of syllables in terms of duration)
 Inner circle varieties
 Outer / expanding circle
varieties
RE cog nize
suc CESS
 Stressed syllable is of
longer duration than
unstressed syllables
re cog NIZE
SUC cess
 Stress goes on ‘heaviest’
syllable, i.e., diphthong
[naiz]
Given vs. New information
 Inner circle varieties
 Use stress to mark new information
 ‘JOHN did it.’
 Outer / expanding circle varieties
 Use other means:
 ‘It was John who did it.’
 ‘John he did it.’
 ‘John only did it.’
Spelling Pronunciations
Pronunciation of ‘silent‘
consonants:
 ‘lamb’ -> /læmb/,
 ‘comb’ -> /komb/
Pronunciation of all vowels
without reduction:
 ‘biology’ > /ba YAL a gi/
~ /ba yo LO gy/
Sounds
 Pronunciation in Outer and Expanding Circle
varieties are different from Inner Circle varieties.
◦ Simplification of final consonant clusters
◦ ‘Desk’ = / dɛsk/ -> /dɛs/
◦ ‘Picked’ = /pɪkt/ -> /pɪk/
Other Possible Pronunciation
Differences
 Voiceless plosives lose aspiration
 /p/, /t/, /k/: ‘pay,’ ‘time,’ ‘key’
 Fricatives replaced by other sounds
 /θ/ > /t/: ‘thin’ > /tɪn/; /ð/ > /d/: ‘then’ > /dɛn/
 ‘Clear’ vs. ‘dark’ /l/ distinction lost
 ‘little’
 /r/ vs. /l/ distinction lost
 ‘rice’ ~ ‘lice’ > /rais/ ~ /lais/
 Initial consonant clusters simplified
 ‘school’ > /ɛskul/ ~ /səkul/
 /ɪ/ ~ /i/ distinction lost
‘sick’ ~ ‘seek’ > /sɪk/ ~ /sik/
Sounds and Intelligibility
 How important is accent for intelligibility?
 Sounds, stress, intonation, rhythm can at times cause a
breakdown in intelligibility
 More likely, attitudes toward particular accents
may become a barrier in communication across
varieties.
Accommodation Theory Revisited
 Those who interact with other
variety users accommodate to
the variation they notice in
each other’s speech or writing
and gradually learn to
communicate more effectively.
 This experience is shared by a
large number of expatriate
workers and professionals all
across the globe in this era of
globalization.
Discussion: Accents in the Popular Media
 Watch this trailer for the movie Cars 2.
 How many accents can you identify?
 What kind of vehicle is associated with each?
 What are the traits associated with the accent exhibited
by each vehicle?
 What does it mean in terms of the perception of
individuals with such accents?
 YouTube – Cars
“Th-th-th-that's all folks!"
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