Listener judgments of speaker and speech traits of varieties of Asian English

ABSTRACT

This study examines language attitudes towards different varieties of English through listener judgments of speaker and speech traits; in addition, the study explores the relationship of these judgments to the intelligibility, as well as the perceived accentedness and comprehensibility, of varieties of Asian English and General American English. While a great deal of research has examined the intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility of English, including varieties of Asian English, no research to date has examined the relationship between language attitudes and the aforementioned dimensions of Asian English speech. That is, little is known about how listeners’ judgments regarding speaker and speech traits relate to intelligibility, as well as how such judgments relate to the way in which the listener evaluates the accentedness and comprehensibility of the speaker's speech. The current study addresses these issues through an examination of listener reactions to three varieties of Asian English (Hong Kong English, Singapore English, and China English), as well as American English.

KEYWORDS:

• Language attitudes
• accentedness
• intelligibility
• comprehensibility
• Asian Englishes
• world Englishes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Jette G. Hansen Edwards earned her PhD from The Ohio State University in Foreign and Second Language Education. She is Professor of applied English linguistics and Head of the Department of English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong SAR. Her research focuses on second language speech production and intelligibility, as well as the attitudes, identity, and use of Asian Englishes.

Dr. Mary L. Zampini earned her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in Spanish Linguistics and holds the rank of Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. Her areas of expertise include second language (L2) speech production and perception, as well as issues related to the intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility of varieties of English and L2 Spanish.

Dr. Caitlin Cunningham earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University in Statistics in 2013, and is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. Her research focus is in the application of statistics to the social and natural sciences, and her collaborative papers include work in physiology, ornithology, olfaction, and linguistics.

ORCID

Jette G. Hansen Edwards http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4542-9479

Notes

1 The term Inner Circle comes from Kachru’s (1985) Three-circle model of world Englishes. Inner Circle refers to contexts where English is a first/native language; this includes countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Outer Circle countries refers to contexts where English is a second language and has important functions in government and education; this includes contexts such as Hong Kong, India, and Singapore, as well as other US or UK postcolonial societies. Expanded Circle countries are those in which English has a foreign language status. This includes countries such as China, Korea, Thailand, and Japan.

2 See Hansen Edwards, Zampini, and Cunningham (2018) for details regarding the reading task. Given that the listeners heard portions of the same text multiple times from different speakers, intelligibility could not be effectively measured. In addition, Hansen Edwards, Zampini, and Cunningham (2018) showed few differences between accentedness and comprehensibility ratings for the spoken vs. read task. Consequently, the read data was not included in the current study and will not be discussed further.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by a Direct Grant from the Faculty of Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.