Hong Kong English: attitudes, identity, and use

The accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of Asian Englishes

“…This finding confirms L2 research previous findings (Munro & Derwing, ) that accentedness and comprehensibility are not correlated to intelligibility and expand these findings to Asian Englishes. This finding also raises concerns about the use of exonormative teaching models in Asia based on perceptions (Hansen Edwards, , 2016; Li, ; Sewell, ; Tsui & Bunton, ) that local varieties of English are not intelligible either locally or globally and that accentedness is an impediment to intelligibility, given that the variety that was rated as the most accented was also the most intelligible in the study.…”

“…The past decade has seen an increasing interest in investigating the intelligibility of Asian Englishes, motivated by a growing interest in world Englishes as well as questions about which (and whose) norms and standards are most appropriate for language teaching and assessment in Asian contexts (Sewell, ). The pervasiveness in the use of exonormative and particularly American and British English language teaching models and norms in Asia continues largely based on the unsupported assumption that locally accented speech is unintelligible both globally and locally (Hansen Edwards, , 2016; Sewell, ; Tsui & Bunton, ). Despite these assumptions, there has been no research that directly examines the relationship among accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of Asian Englishes.…”

“…The current study examines the intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility of three varieties of English in Asia – the English spoken in China (China English), Hong Kong (Hong Kong English), and Singapore (Singapore English), as well as American English, which has gained prominence in Asia in the past decade due to the influence of the American mass media (Hansen Edwards, ; Tan, , ). Despite the fact that many researchers and a growing number of speakers of these varieties (Bolton, , ; Hansen Edwards, , ; Kirkpatrick, ; Schneider, ) view these Englishes as legitimate in their own right, American and/or British English models and norms for language teaching and assessment are still prevalent in many parts of Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and China, largely due to the unsupported belief that American English and British English are ‘less accented’ and thus more intelligible than Asian Englishes (Chan, ; Hansen Edwards, ; Sewell, ). However, there has been no research to date that examines the relationship between intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness of Asian Englishes.…”

China English: Attitudes, legitimacy, and the native speaker construct

“…On the one hand, they accept CE's existence and believe it represents the English in China, but on the other hand, they view the linguistic features of CE negatively, most likely due to a continued comparison of CE's features to those of ‘native’ varieties of English. Interestingly, this has also been found for speakers of Hong Kong English (see Groves, 2011; Hansen Edwards, 2015). There is also a divergence in how the respondents view linguistic features of CE.…”

“…He & Li, 2009;He & Zhang, 2010) that attitudes towards CE in China have become more positive across time. Interestingly, this has also been found for speakers of Hong Kong English (see Groves, 2011;Hansen Edwards, 2015). Over a third believed that it is a unique variety of English in China, and over a quarter believed it represents their identity.…”