Having a nice accent, or being intelligible?

Having a nice accent, or being intelligible?

As English is used globally, the particular varieties of English emerge in different parts of the world (Bamgose, 2001).

Although American and British English are said to be the preferred standard varieties of English (Matsuda, 2002), a fact is that the international variety of English is actually non-existent (Kachru, 2012).

Accommodating "the localized form of English" (Bolton, 2012, p.1) is thus vital.

One major reason is because today, English is mostly learned (Kirkpatrick, 2003) and spoken (Kachru, 2012) by non-native speakers living either in the outer or expanding circles (for the concentric circle model of WE see Kachru, 1992).

With different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, they use their localized Englishes to communicate across countries, as an illustration, there are Indian farmers importing the harvesting machinery from Japan, German professors teaching at universities in Indonesia, Chinese football players attending football training in Brazil, and so forth.

Of course, this raises another concern. But attention is no longer focused exclusively on which accent is more superior, and the like. Instead, how and to what degree can they understand each other messages?

The issue of intelligibility is thus becoming evident (see Nelson, 2018; Smith & Nelson, 1985).

To your knowledge, what factors determine the intelligibility of the localized Englishes?

References

Bamgbose, A. (2001). World Englishes and globalization. World Englishes, 20(3), 357–363. doi:10.1111/1467-971x.t01-1-00220 

Bolton, K. (2012). Varieties of World Englishes. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi:10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1260

Kachru, B. B. (1992). World Englishes: Approaches, issues and resources. Language Teaching, 25(1). doi:10.1017/s0261444800006583

Kachru, B. B. (2012). World Englishes: Overview. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi:10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1349

Matsuda, A. (2002). "International understanding" through teaching world Englishes. World Englishes, 21(3), 436–440. doi:10.1111/1467-971x.00262

Kirkpatrick, A. (2003). English as an ASEAN Lingua Franca: Implications for Research and Language Teaching. Asian Englishes, 6(2), 82–91. doi:10.1080/13488678.2003.10801120

Nelson, C. L. (2012). Intelligibility in World Englishes. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi:10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0550

Smith, L. E., & Nelson, C. L. (1985). International intelligibility of English: directions and resources. World Englishes, 4(3), 333–342. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971x.1985.tb00423.x 

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