engleski

The Pronunciation of ELF in Croatia: Attitudes and Pronunciation

The present paper is a survey of the authors' work on the topic of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in Croatia. The interaction between the global and the local in the world of multilingualism and multiculturalism has become an important subject of linguistic research. In the times of globalisation and Croatia's membership in the European Union, Croats must be prepared to use English extensively. Considering that nowadays international communication in English mainly takes place among non-native speakers, who outnumber the native speakers (cf. Kachru 1991 ; Görlach 2002), native models of English pronunciation have ceased to be unchallenged ideals. Consequently, 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. In this paper we argue for an approach that integrates research on attitudes towards ELF pronunciation in Croatia with actual pronunciation research. Our research into attitudes to ELF shows that they vary according to identity. Thus, Croatian university students exhibit a clear connection between attitudes to English pronunciation and identity construction in various societal roles (Authors 2011 ; 2012). This is the basis of our stratificational approach to ELF, whereby the attitudes towards ELF, the variety of English pronunciation selected as the pronunciation model and the extent to which one wants to aspire to it depend on the complex profile of the learner/user (including his/her identity construction), the purpose of learning and communicational needs. Furthermore, the attitudes to ELF are shared among (university) teachers and their students, and perpetuated in the higher education system, with Croatian university teachers not attaching much importance to the development of accommodation skills and strategies which would be useful to future ELF users (Authors 2013). Therefore, we make a case for working on English pronunciation at all levels and in all areas of education (Authors 2012a), which means raising future teachers' awareness about the new role in which their students will find themselves as users of English in the contemporary context of globalisation. These attitudes go hand-in-hand with actual pronunciation practice. Successful learners of English pronunciation (as opposed to less successful ones), both in primary school (Authors 2012) and at university level, master the 'core' as well as the 'non-core' pronunciation features, as defined by Jenkins (2002). The latter are not crucial for international intelligibility, but as shown by Author (2013), success in mastering the core goes hand in hand with picking up the native-like non-core features as well (e.g. vowel reduction, stress-based rhythm, native-like allophonic alternations), which are perceived as part and parcel of what is felt to be 'good English'. This brings us back to attitudes towards ELF pronunciation: most Croats in our studies exhibit 'linguistic schizophrenia' (Kachru 1977): they deny any conscious emulation of native pronunciation models, but judge that foreign-accented English pronunciation 'does not sound good'.

English as a Lingua Franca; pronunciation; attitudes; Croatia

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