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The sociolinguistics of English as Lingua Franca (EFL) pronunciation.

As far as sociolinguistics is concerned, the first task is to problematise the notion of standard accent. Essentially there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ accent, merely prestige accents, primarily RP and General American English (GA), stigmatised accents both native and (more often) non-native (see Lippi-Green,1997; Bonfiglio,2002), and a range of variously tolerated regional and social accents between the two extremes. The so-called BritishEnglish standard accent (RP) is claimed nowadays to be used by a mere fraction of British Native Speakers (NSs), possibly only three per cent in its unmodified form (see Trudgill,2002: 171). The vast majority of NSs of English speak with regionallyand/or socially-modified accents, whether tolerated or stigmatised. Clearly, then, the RP accent cannot be ‘standard’ in the sense of being a widely-used norm. Instead, ‘standard’ refers accent-wise to a level of pronunciation assumed by many to be better in some way than the others, and is thus standard only in the sense of a level of excellence to be aspired to. Excellence, however, is not something that can be measured linguistically: it is not intrinsic to an accent, but merely reflects the value judgements of the elitist group who habitually use it or would if they could.

It should be a matter for teachers and their learners to decide whether they wish to subscribe to the (linguistically-unsound) belief in the superiority of RP. In some communication contexts an RP accent will undoubtedly provide them with a social advantage. This is more likely to be the case if learners intend to use their English to communicate and blend in largely with NSs, especially if the communication will take place in NS countries. Even here, though, their awareness should be raised to the fact that the majority of NSs with whom they communicate will not have an RP accent. At the most, it will probably be regionallymodified RP. On the other hand, having been apprised of the facts of sociolinguistic variation, learners may prefer to project their own (L2) regional and social identity through their accent. In this case their goal is more likely to be an accent that retains a clear trace of their L1, provided that it does not threaten the intelligibility of their pronunciation in their target (probably ELF) communication contexts.

JENKINS, J. Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: A Sociopolitical Perspective. In GNUTZMANN, C.; INTEMANN, F. (Org.) The Globalization of English and the English Language Classroom. Oxford: OUP,2005. p.145-158.