World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility_第1页
World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility_第2页
World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility_第3页
World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility_第4页
World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility_第5页
已阅读5页,还剩13页未读 继续免费阅读

下载本文档

版权说明:本文档由用户提供并上传,收益归属内容提供方,若内容存在侵权,请进行举报或认领

文档简介

428 Larry E. Smith and Cecil L. Nelson24 World Englishes andIssues of IntelligibilityLARRY E. SMITH ANDCECIL L. NELSON1 IntroductionIn recorded history, the present global spread and use of English is unpar-alleled (see discussions in Kachru, 1986; Quirk and Widdowson, 1985; Smith,1983; Strevens, 1982). Crystal (1985) estimated that as many as two billionpeople have some ability in English. Alatis and Straehle (1997) cited a USIAestimate of 700 million users of native and non-native English, and also referto English being “the most commonly used language at international confer-ences”; they also cite a British Council number of two billion users of English“with some awareness” of the language. Numbers cited and calculated byKachru (2005: 1415 and 2057) indicate that English users in India and Chinaalone number 533 million, a population of users “larger than the total numberof English speakers of the USA, the UK and Canada.” Whoevers figures areaccepted, it is certain that the users of English in the Outer and ExpandingCircles outnumber those in the Inner Circle.1With such spread of the lan-guage, a frequently voiced concern is the possibility that speakers of differentvarieties of English will soon become unintelligible to one another (see Chap-ter 17 in this volume). Bansal 1969 is an example of an early attempt to addressthis question. Citing Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens (1964), Bansal wrotethat “a very sensible view” was “that imported forms of English should beexcluded from consideration for use as an educational model and mutualintelligibility should be attained by adopting standard English grammarand lexis, and keeping the number of phonological units . . . close to those ofother educated accents” (Bansal, 1969: 13). Van der Walt (2000: 173) wrotethat “The assumption that South Africans run the risk of becoming incom-prehensible internationally was the motivation for her study.”In facing this question from a sociolinguistically realistic point of view, how-ever, it must be kept in mind that for at least the last two hundred years therehave been English-speaking people in some parts of the world who have notbeen intelligible to other English-speaking people in other parts of the world.THOC24 19/07/2006, 11:53 AM428The Handbook of World EnglishesCecil L. NelsonYamuna Kachru,Edited by Braj B. Kachru, 2006 by Blackwell Publishing LtdWorld Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility 429Such is a natural phenomenon when any language becomes so widespread. Itis not something that is “going to happen” but something that has happenedalready and will continue to occur. It is unnecessary for every user of Englishto be intelligible to every other user of English. Our speech and writing inEnglish needs to be intelligible to those with whom we wish to communicatein English. For example, there may be many people in India who use Englishfrequently among themselves and who are not intelligible to English-speakingFilipinos who also frequently use English among themselves; members of thesetwo groups may not, as yet, have felt the need (or had the opportunity) tocommunicate with one another. These Indians and Filipinos may use Englishto communicate only with fellow countrymen and have little or no difficultyin doing so. If that is so, neither group needs to be concerned about its inter-national intelligibility. Of course, there are many Indians and many Filipinoswho use English to interact internationally, and they are the ones who must beconcerned about mutual intelligibility.2 Defining “Intelligibility”Perhaps the concern about intelligibility can be rephrased in the followingway: In international situations where people wish to communicate with oneanother in English, how intelligible are speakers of different national varieties?With the global spread of English, is the problem of understanding acrosscultures likely to increase in frequency?Elsewhere (e.g., Smith and Nelson, 1985), it has been argued that those whohave traditionally been called “native speakers” are not the sole judges ofwhat is intelligible, nor are they always more intelligible than “non-native”speakers (see, e.g., Nelson, 1992; Smith and Rafiqzad, 1979). The greater thefamiliarity speakers, native or non-native, have with a variety of English,the more likely it is that they will understand and be understood by membersof that speech community. Understanding is not solely speaker- or listener-centered, but is interactional between speaker and listener.Understanding, or “intelligibility” in a broad sense, should be dividedinto three categories which make it accessible for examination and analysisin more specific terms:1 intelligibility: word/utterance recognition;2 comprehensibility: word/utterance meaning (locutionary force);3 interpretability: meaning behind word/utterance (illocutionary force).Smith and Christopher (2001: 923) present an interactional scenariowhich will serve to explicate these three components. An Australian womanis reported to have been having a conversation in English with a taxi driverin Istanbul. Things were going well “until she asked the driver to turn offthe interior light”: the driver refused “sharply.” Since her request seemedTHOC24 19/07/2006, 11:53 AM429430 Larry E. Smith and Cecil L. Nelsoninnocuous to the passenger, and since a mutual compatibility in English hadbeen established by the preceding conversation, she thought there had been asimple failure of intelligibility or comprehensibility that the driver had mis-heard or misunderstood some part of her utterance so she repeated it, onlyto receive a “near-hostile” negative response and marked silence until the endof the trip, which terminated in the driver “almost snatching the fare fromher and driving away rapidly.”The failure of the interaction turned on a mismatch of interpretations ofthe female passengers utterance: she just wanted the light turned off, forwhatever reason of comfort, or perhaps she simply thought it did not need tobe on; the driver was not only culturally but legally bound not to allow him-self to be in “a dark and confined space” with a woman. Smith and Christopherspeculate that he may have been “shocked” by her request, which may haveled to his responding as he did. Smith and Christopher write:The whole uncomfortable situation might have been avoided if the Australianhad . . . said, for example: “Do you always leave the interior light on when youdrive?” Probably the driver would have replied: “I must leave it on, that is thelaw.” Another source of information may be a mediator, an independent thirdparty familiar with both cultures involved. (p. 93)This example shows that successful communication in English is notassured by the participants exhibiting good pronunciation the focus ofso much attention in ESL and EFL teaching and learning or even good lexisand grammar; utterances have pragmatic effects which cannot be interpretedwithout situational, social, and cultural awareness. These three categories intelligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability may be thought of asdegrees of understanding on a continuum of complexity of variables, fromphonological to pragmatic, with intelligibility being lowest and interpretabilitybeing highest.3 A Study of the Three ComponentsThe remainder of this chapter reports on a study carried out by Smith (1992)designed to help determine: (1) what differences, if any, there are in the intel-ligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability of selected taped material ofnine national varieties; (2) how familiarity of topic and familiarity of nationalvariety influence the listeners understanding of these varieties; and (3) whetherthe language proficiency of the speaker and/or listener influences the intel-ligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability of these varieties. For thisstudy, the nine national varieties, represented on tape, were spoken by edu-cated speakers (at the graduate level at the University of Hawaii) from China,India, Indonesia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Taiwan, the UnitedKingdom, and the United States. The tests of intelligibility, comprehensibility,THOC24 19/07/2006, 11:53 AM430World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility 431and interpretability based on these recordings were administered to threedifferent groups of native and non-native educated users of English.To test assumptions concerning the effects of proficiency in English andfamiliarity with topic and speech variety on understanding (intelligibility,comprehensibility, and interpretability), it was desirable to have both nativeand non-native educated English users as subjects. These subjects exhibiteda range in their degrees of proficiency in English and in their familiarity withthe content of the selections, as well as in their familiarity with the nationalvariety of English being used by the speakers. The three groups were com-posed of: (1) non-native speakers, (2) native speakers, and (3) mixed non-native and native speakers.Group 1: Non-native Speakers This group was made up of ten non-nativeEnglish speakers from Japan whose English proficiency ranged from scoresof 375 to 600 on the TOEFL test; four were students in the Hawaii EnglishLanguage Program (HELP) at the University of Hawaii and six were studentsat the Japan-America Institute of Management Science (JAIMS) in Honolulu.Subjects in this group were familiar with the Japanese variety of English, aswell as with the content of the Japanese speakers presentation of “Forms ofAddress” (i.e., how Japanese address non-Japanese in English at internationalmeetings). Since they had studied English for at least ten years and werestudents in the United States, they were also somewhat familiar with theAmerican and British varieties of English and with the content of the US andBritish speakers presentations on “Forms of Address” (i.e., how British andAmericans address outsiders in English at international meetings). However,these subjects were not familiar with any of the other speech varieties or withthe topic of forms of address used in the other countries.Group 2: Native Speakers This group was made up of ten native speakersof American English who were undergraduate students at the University ofHawaii. All were quite familiar with the American English used by the Amer-ican speaker on the tape, as well as with the content of her presentation. Theywere not totally familiar with any other of the speech varieties on the tapesbut had had greater exposure to the Japanese and Filipino varieties than toany of the others. They knew little about forms of address in any countryother than the United States.Group 3: Mixed This group was composed of one native and eight non-native speakers, one each from Burma, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, thePhilippines, Thailand, and the United States. Each of these people was fullyfluent in English (having scored above 600 on the TOEFL test). As East-WestCenter graduate students, they had all become familiar with several differentnational varieties of English. They were also familiar to some extent with theforms of address used in different countries because of their interactions at theEast-West Center with people from many parts of the world.All three groups were balanced for age, sex, and educational background.The subjects with the lower TOEFL scores were highly intelligent and welleducated, but they had not had much experience of interacting in English.THOC24 19/07/2006, 11:53 AM431432 Larry E. Smith and Cecil L. Nelson3.1 Test materials and proceduresIn order to have educated English speakers of the nine national varieties inter-acting with one another, graduate and postgraduate students at the Universityof Hawaii who were fluent in English were chosen to produce the listeningpassages. The speakers were asked to explain to an interactor who was ofanother national variety the forms of address used by people from thespeakers country when they addressed outsiders in English. The respondentwas, in each case, a person whom the speaker did not know and who knewlittle about, but was interested in, the speakers country. The respondent wasinstructed, in the speakers presence, to listen to the speaker, interrupt withquestions of clarification when necessary, and give evidence of understandingthe speaker by paraphrasing the important points the speaker made. Thespeaker was instructed to make sure the respondent understood how peoplein his/her country would address an outsider in English, for example, atinternational meetings both inside and outside his/her country.Both speakers and respondents were told that the language in the recordingsession was to be informal but real. That is, they were to speak to each other aspeers in an informal situation; they were not to pretend that they were otherpeople or that the setting was another place. They were to recognize andaccept the fact that they were two people in a recording studio at the East-West Center in Honolulu. They were instructed that the conversation shouldstop once the speaker was satisfied that the respondent understood what thespeaker had said about the topic. The interactors were told that they couldmake notes but that neither was to read directly from the notes. The sessionswere unrehearsed, and lasted from 20 to 40 minutes. The tapes of these ses-sions were edited down to ten minutes of conversation which could be used asmaterial for the comprehensibility and interpretability tests.For the intelligibility test, the subjects heard a part of the conversation whichwas not used as part of the edited ten-minute presentation. This was doneso that the subjects would not hear any part of the conversation twice.In addition to the conversations with speakers of the nine national varietiesmentioned above, one tape involving a speaker from Burma and a respond-ent from Thailand was also made to use in a demonstration of the testingprocedure for all three subject groups.Although no formal attempt was made to evaluate the difficulty level of theinteractions, all were judged to be approximately equal in that (1) both speakerand respondent were fully proficient in English and believed themselves tobe educated speakers of their national variety of English, (2) each person spokeclearly, and (3) the number of embedded sentences and the speed of deliverywere approximately the same for all interactions. Of course, the setting andtopic were always the same, and technical jargon was never used. In each case,if the speaker was male the respondent was female, and vice versa, so that oneach tape both sexes were represented.THOC24 19/07/2006, 11:53 AM432World Englishes and Issues of Intelligibility 433Three types of test questions were developed. A cloze procedure was usedto test intelligibility (word/utterance recognition). Multiple-choice questionswere written to test comprehensibility (word/utterance meaning). Subjectswere asked to paraphrase a small portion of the conversation they had heardin order to test their level of interpretability (meaning behind word/utter-ance). The test questions and directions were recorded by the same speaker.3.2 The testsEach testing session began with the researcher saying to each of the threesubject groups that he was doing a study on the degrees of understanding ofdifferent national varieties of English and that he appreciated the subjectswillingness to cooperate. They were assured that the results of the tests wouldhave no effect on their academic work, but they were encouraged to do theirbest. The trial test was introduced, and the subjects were told that they couldask any question about the procedure during the sample test.Each subject group then listened to the tape about forms of address inBurma and filled out the sample test items for the cloze procedure (intelligibil-ity), multiple choice test (comprehensibility), and paraphrasing (interpretability).After the sample test, the subjects filled out the more subjective questionnaire(see Appendix), and they had the opportunity to ask questions about it.On that form, they were asked to state such things as (1) how easy/difficult itwas for them to understand the speaker and respondent; (2) how much of thetotal conversation they had understood; (3) the nationalities of the speakerand the respondent; and (4) the English proficiency level of the speaker andthe respondent.Subjects then went on to the test proper. For each of the five paired record-ings, each subject group first listened to the ten-minute conversation, with therespondent asking questions and paraphrasing the important points. At theend of each conversation, the subjects were given a test which consisted of (1)a cloze procedure of a passage with ten blanks (one at every seventh word) tobe filled in as they listened, phrase by phrase, to a part of the original, longerconversation that they had not heard before; (2) three multiple-choice ques-tions based on the ten-minute conversation that they had heard; and (3) threephrases taken from the ten-minute interaction they were to paraphrase accord-ing to their interpretation of the meanings of the phrases in the conversation.This system was followed for each of the five paired recordings. That is, (1) thesubjects heard a tape about a country; (2) the subjects were tested on thatcountry; (3) the subjects heard the next tape about another country; (4) thesubjects were tested on that country. This continued until all five pairedrecordings had been heard and tested. The order of the five pairs of tapedconversations was different for each subject group, to insure that any practiceeffect was balanced across varieties.All of the tests to the three subject groups were administered on separatedays within a two-month period (October and November 1986). IdenticalTHOC24 19/07/2006, 11:53 AM433434 Larry E. Smith and Cecil L. Nelsonplayback equipment was used for each group, always in quiet surroundings.The te

温馨提示

  • 1. 本站所有资源如无特殊说明,都需要本地电脑安装OFFICE2007和PDF阅读器。图纸软件为CAD,CAXA,PROE,UG,SolidWorks等.压缩文件请下载最新的WinRAR软件解压。
  • 2. 本站的文档不包含任何第三方提供的附件图纸等,如果需要附件,请联系上传者。文件的所有权益归上传用户所有。
  • 3. 本站RAR压缩包中若带图纸,网页内容里面会有图纸预览,若没有图纸预览就没有图纸。
  • 4. 未经权益所有人同意不得将文件中的内容挪作商业或盈利用途。
  • 5. 人人文库网仅提供信息存储空间,仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理,对用户上传分享的文档内容本身不做任何修改或编辑,并不能对任何下载内容负责。
  • 6. 下载文件中如有侵权或不适当内容,请与我们联系,我们立即纠正。
  • 7. 本站不保证下载资源的准确性、安全性和完整性, 同时也不承担用户因使用这些下载资源对自己和他人造成任何形式的伤害或损失。

评论

0/150

提交评论