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English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: the Identification of L1 and L2 accents: A Multifactorial Analysis of Pan-European Experimental Data

Tijdschriftbijdrage - Tijdschriftartikel

While empirical research on attitudes towards languages and linguistic varieties has become increasingly popular from the 1960s onwards (e.g. Lambert at al. 1960), experimental investigations into the ability to correctly identify the origin of speakers are in comparison still relatively scarce. We know that the ability to correlate a stretch of uncategorised speech (token) with a series of models (types) is experientially acquired in early childhood (e.g. Kristiansen 2010), but how similar are those abilities in adulthood and across European nations? English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has become an integral part of the linguistic reality in Europe (and of the linguistic scenario in the entire world) (e.g. Jenkins, Baker & Dewey 2018). Whenever we communicate with anyone who is not a speaker of our own native language in any European country, most of the time we communicate in English. But does our L1 accent still shine through? Will we be recognised (and in most cases probably also) stereotypically judged on the basis of just a short stretch of speech when we communicate in ELF? In Part I of this paper we outline the design of the first large-scale pan-European project on L1 and L2 identifications of English as a Lingua Franca in Europe, including 785 respondents from 8 countries. Exploratory analyses confirm the hypothesis that statistically significant asymmetries would show up across different European countries or regions. In Part II of this paper we then aim to explain these asymmetries through a multifactorial statistical analysis (Geeraerts, Grondelaers & Speelman 1999; Tagliamonte & Baayen 2012; Speelman, Heylen, Geeraerts 2018).
Tijdschrift: Review of Cognitive Linguistics
ISSN: 1877-9751
Issue: 2
Volume: 16
Pagina's: 494 - 518
Jaar van publicatie:2018
BOF-keylabel:ja
IOF-keylabel:ja
BOF-publication weight:0.5
CSS-citation score:1
Auteurs:International
Authors from:Higher Education
Toegankelijkheid:Open