Section 1. Guidelines for reading texts on the use of English in European education

By virtue of the considerable number of speakers English has in the world, and also due to the rich variety of its variants, English is more likely to be subjected to accented speech than any other language. The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from such speakers imperfectly learning the pronunciation of English, either by transferring the phonological rules from their mother tongue into their English speech ("interference") or through implementing strategies similar to those used in primary language acquisition. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language.

The text below looks at attitudes towards accents, with particular interest in the solidarity dimension (i.e. how much a person identifies with an accent) and status dimension (i.e. how much prestige is assigned to an accent).

A person’s identity is determined not only by personal but also by social identity. Social identity includes ethnic identity and originates from group membership which is established by self-categorisation. Accent and language are considered to be major determinants of social identity, and there has been a lot of research on the expression of social identity through people’s accents and their attitudes towards other accents. Below is an account of a research of a Swedish teacher Britta Larson Bergstedt on attitudes of non-native speakers (NNS) of English towards their own (ingroup) accent and other (outgroup) accents of English.

Text 1-15. EURO-ENGLISH ACCENTS

(After Britta Larson Bergstedt, Lund University, Department of Linguistics)

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