engleski

Chapter Six. English as a Lingua Franca in Croatia: Attitudes and Pronunciation

This is a survey of the authors' work on the topic of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in Croatia. In the times of globalization and Croatia's membership in the European Union, Croats must be prepared to use English extensively. Considering that nowadays international communication in English for the most part takes place among non-native speakers, who outnumber the native speakers, native models of English pronunciation have ceased to be unchallenged ideals. As a result, the newly emerging varieties of ELF, with all their local, national features have been increasingly becoming the subject of linguistic description. The national features of ELF are the most obvious in pronunciation, which is the aspect of ELF we focus on in our research for the most part. Our research establishes a clear stratification of ELF users in Croatia, depending on the complex profiles of learners and users. We argue for a combination of methods to study this stratification. Croatian “mature” ELF users exhibit specific, mainly “non-core” features (Jenkins 2002) of foreign-accented English. On the basis of a focus-group study involving participants from five different L1 backgrounds, we show that in this sense they are comparable to ELF users of other nationalities. It is shown that an outstanding common feature of their ELF is characteristic rhythm. We looked at the extent of vowel reduction by working out the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) according to Low, Grabe and Nolan (2000) in test passage reading and in moderated discussion for each of the participants. The results show that the PVI values get homogenized, irrespective of the L1 background in moderated discussion, as opposed to test passage reading, where the PVI values clearly reflect the rhythmic nature of the L1. This can be interpreted as the emergence of new rhythmic patterns in ELF use. The results presented here have implications for English teaching and for further ELF research.

English as a Lingua Franca, pronunciation, Croatia, foreign-accented English, rhythm, L1 background

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