Changing Contexts and Shifting Paradigms in Pronunciation Teaching

■ Pronunciation is perhaps the linguistic feature most open to judgment.As a surface structure phenomenon that is most noticeable, one's accent easily evokes people's biases.For the same reason, pronunciation has been the most prescriptively taught aspect of language instruction.Pedagogies for accent reduction have bordered on the pathological.The articles in this special topic issue bring a much needed research focus on social and communicative considerations in pronunciation that can lead pedagogy in constructive new directions.Relating pronunciation to issues of identity, group membership, interpersonal negotiation, and the plurality of World Englishes, they treat the topic with great intellectual…

• UO
  University of Cambridge
• UO
  University of Oxford
• SS
  Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada