This article explores the potential of phonetic symbols in pronunciation teaching/learning, with a focus on English language teaching (ELT). After a brief contextualisation of current views of pronunciation instruction in the second-language (L2) teaching literature, the article reviews some of the potential advantages of, conditions for, and…

Stress is an integral part of conveying meaning in English at not only the level of the word but also the phrase and rhetoric where it is exploited in English in literature, humor, advertising, and more. Simultaneously, stress marks language variation in regional, generational, and ethnic dialects. Thus, stress bears a great functional load and…

Direct object clitics in Latin American Spanish are subject to great variability in features across dialects. Variability also characterizes bilingual acquisition and especially clitic doubling structures in language contact contexts. We focus on the distribution of clitics and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in clitic doubling structures among…

This paper analyzes the status of the Andalusian variety within Spanish language pluricentricity. It offers an example of the rise of new systems of normative stratification in the traditional 'linguistic peripheries' and of how the different linguistic agents deal with the vindication of social and linguistic identities. This fact makes us treat…

Various examinations are administered at universities across the US as a means of assessing bilingual/multilingual international teaching assistants' (ITAs') proficiency in spoken English before they are permitted to teach. While such exams are taken by students in a range of academic disciplines, recent research suggests that communicative…

There is a need to embrace translingualism in order to avert covert tensions that emanate from the ascription of linguistic supremacy to "standard" English, especially among teachers of immigrant children and in overall public discourse. Drawing inspiration from the 1974 resolutions of the Conference on College Composition and…

Are palatal consonants articulated by multiple tongue gestures (coronal and dorsal) or by a single gesture that brings the tongue into contact with the palate at several places of articulation? The lenition of palatal consonants (resulting in approximants) has been presented as evidence that palatals are simple, not complex: When reduced, they do…

By comparing two recent French films, "L'Esquive" (Kechiche 2004) and "Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis" (Boon 2008), a realistic drama and a comedy, this article proposes an analysis of two different cases of stylisation that entertain complex relations of authenticity with stigmatised vernaculars, and in which actors stylise their own linguistic…

With the advent of globalization and the increasingly multilingual and multicultural nature of nations, institutions and classrooms, the fundamental nature of foreign language instruction is changing. Such traditional notions as: "native speaker", "target culture", "standard L2" are becoming problematic with the…

This study seeks to answer two research questions. First, can listeners distinguish the ethnicity of the speakers on the basis of voice quality alone? Second, do demographic differences among the listeners affect discriminability? A simple but carefully designed and controlled ethnic identification test was carried out on 325 Singaporean…

This study investigates the pronunciation of English among Norwegian adolescents by applying sociolinguistic methods in a second language context. Results from an auditory analysis of seven phonological variables show a blended use of linguistic features from American English and British English, with some additional pronunciations, forming a…

This article discusses the novel "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw (1957) which depicts Eliza, a flower girl from East London, who became the subject of an "experiment" by a Professor of Phonetics who vowed to change the way she spoke. The story is an excellent example of a very real and contextual portrait of how language,…

This study examined the effect of information about native/non-native speaker status on non-native listeners' perception of English words with word-final stops. A survey study conducted with 38 Chinese learners of English in Guangzhou, China examined their stereotypes about Cantonese English. They described it negatively and named features…

Previous research has established that old or given information is often deaccented. The assumption is that unimportant information ought to be weakened and attenuated in speech. Consequently, given information is often deaccented and new information is usually accented in most varieties of English. However, some nonnative varieties, such as…

With the growth of world English, what learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) need most is not a native-like accent but ability to communicate with other non-native speakers. The role of English pronunciation, its aims within the ESL curriculum, and which norms and models are most appropriate for such instruction should be rethought.…