Where does a ‘foreign’ accent matter? German, Spanish and Singaporean listeners’ reactions to Dutch-accented English, and standard British and American English accents

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.

The effects of lecturers’ non-native accent strength in English on intelligibility and attitudinal evaluations by native and non-native English students

“…For the Dutch listeners, our findings provide evidence against the matched interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit, which holds that non-native listeners may find non-native speakers with the same L1 background easier to understand than native speakers (Bent & Bradlow, 2003;Munro et al, 2006;Stibbard & Lee, 2006;Wang, 2007), and as such our findings are in line with other studies showing that the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit does not always apply (Hayes-Harb et al, 2008;Munro et al, 2006). Our findings do not provide support for the existence of a native speech intelligibility benefit, which entails that native speakers are considered easier to understand than non-native speakers by both native and non-native listeners (see Major et al, 2002Major et al, , 2005, in line with other studies which also show that a native speech intelligibility benefit does not always occur (Nejjari et al, 2012(Nejjari et al, , 2020. The implication for EMI is that actual understanding of a lecture would not appear to be compromised by non-native accentedness either for non-native listeners (with or without the same L1 background as the lecturer) or for native English listeners, which is important given that the main aim of lectures is the transfer of knowledge.…”

Dutch listeners’ responses to Dutch, British and American English accents in three contexts.

“…Nejjari et al, 2012;Cargile, 1997;Dalton-Puffer et al, 1997;He & Zhang, 2010;Hendriks et al, 2016;Lindemann, 2003;Matsuura et al, 1994;McKenzie, 2008;Ryan & Bulik, 1982). In line with other research, our results showed that an L2 accent does not necessarily evoke lower affect (Nejjari et al, 2012;Hendriks et al, 2016) or dynamism (Nejjari et al, 2020), and that speaker evaluations can be impacted by context (Cargile, 1997).…”

A comparison of attitudes toward remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic between students attending a Chinese and an Australian campus

“…This difference was not a surprising response since the practice of face-to-face teaching remains the norm at Chinese campuses ( 42 ). In addition, differences in accent can also add a layer of difficulties when staff from the Australian university are themselves from an EAL background ( 65 – 67 ).…”