Abstract
How well L2 English is understood and how L2 English speakers perceive one another within varying communication contexts has been studied relatively rarely, even though most speakers of English in the world are L2 speakers. In this matched-guise experiment (N = 1699) the effects of L1 and L2 English accents and communication context were tested on speech understandability (intelligibility, comprehensibility, interpretability) and speaker evaluations (status, affect, dynamism). German (N = 617), Spanish (N = 540), and Singaporean listeners (N = 542) were asked to evaluate three accents (Dutch-accented English, standard British English, standard American English) in three communication contexts (Lecture, Audio Tour, Job Pitch). The main finding is that the Dutch-accented English accent was understood as well as the two L1 English accents. Furthermore, Dutch-accented English evoked equally positive evaluations to the two L1 English accents in German listeners, and more positive evaluations than the two L1 English accents in Spanish and Singaporean listeners. These results suggest that accent training aimed at achieving an L1 English accent may not always be necessary for (Dutch) English language learners, especially when they are expected to mostly interact with other L2 speakers of English. More generally, our results indicate that L2 English speakers’ understanding and their evaluation of L1 and L2 Englishes would not seem to reflect traditional language norms. Instead, they seem to reflect the socio-cultural embedding of a language norm in a Lingua Franca English speech community that does not view accent varieties as a hindrance to successful communication.
Highlights
In second language acquisition (SLA) research the perspective is that fully acquiring an L2 involves achieving proficiency in a ‘target language’, free from L1 influence [e.g. 1–7], which most L2 speakers do not achieve [4,5,6, 8]
If we extend the idea of expectancy violations to accent production in an Lingua Franca English (LFE) speech community setting, it might explain why evaluations of accents and speakers can vary across communication contexts
With regard to our expectations, we will report whether the Spanish listeners displayed a lower level of speech understandability of the tested accents compared to German and Singaporean listeners; whether Singaporean listeners displayed a higher level of speech understandability compared to German and Spanish listeners; and whether the lecture communication context evoked higher speech understandability compared to the job pitch and audio tour communication contexts
Summary
In second language acquisition (SLA) research the perspective is that fully acquiring an L2 involves achieving proficiency in a ‘target language’, free from L1 influence [e.g. 1–7], which most L2 speakers do not achieve [4,5,6, 8]. Than L1 speakers and for not sufficiently taking the social and interactive nature of language use into consideration [e.g. 9, 10] With respect to the latter, for example, Firth and Wagner [9] have called for a more holistic view on SLA. They argue that it is important to acquire more knowledge on the social context, the interactive nature of language acquisition, and the effects of language use on the perceptions of speakers. Community members are probably less focused on how fellow L2 English speakers are dissimilar to L1 English speakers and how that may potentially hinder communications and reflect (potentially negatively) on how they are perceived as speakers
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