hongkong english

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World Englishes, Vol. 27, No. 3/4, pp. 359377, 2008. 0883-2919

The international intelligibility of Hong Kong English

ANDY KIRKPATRICK, DAVID DETERDING , and JENNIE WONG

ABSTRACT: This paper reports on an investigation into the international intelligibility of the Englishof educated Hong Kong speakers whose L1 is Cantonese. Samples of recordings of extended discourseobtained from three female and three male final-year English majors studying at the Hong Kong Instituteof Education were played to groups of university students in Singapore and Australia. The listeners wereasked to complete worksheets based on the recordings in order to determine the extent to which they foundthe Hong Kong speakers intelligible. They were also asked to evaluate the extent to which they thought theHong Kong speakers were intelligent and likeable, and to give reasons for their choices.

INTRODUCTION

A commonly expressed fear about new varieties of English is that they may be unintelligi-ble in international contexts, and this is a major reason why they remain seldom promotedas possible linguistic models for the language classroom. In contrast, it is the supposed in-ternational intelligibility of native speaker varieties of English which provides a substantialargument for their adoption as classroom models in many parts of the world. In East Asia,for example, the ministries of education in China (including Hong Kong), Korea, and Japan

prescribe native speaker models of English as models for teaching, while at the same timedownplaying or even forbidding the use of a local variety of English as a legitimate class-room model. The argument concerning the international intelligibility of native-speakervarieties has proved remarkably resilient despite research (e.g. Smith and Rafiqzad 1979;Hung 2002; Deterding 2005; Deterding and Kirkpatrick 2006) which shows, on the onehand, that some native speaker varieties are in fact not as internationally intelligible ashas commonly been supposed and, on the other, that many non-native varieties are moreintelligible throughout the world than is often believed, being more intelligible than certainnative speaker varieties.

Empirical research that explores the international intelligibility of non-native varietiesis important, therefore, as it may help in making decisions about their role in the languageclassroom especially as many non-native speakers of English remain convinced that anative speaker variety of English provides a better classroom model than a non-nativevariety. As Kachru (1992: 56) has pointed out, non-native institutionalized varietiesof English only become socially accepted as the norm in the third and final phase oftheir development. And while we do not want here to engage in the debate betweenworld Englishes and English as a lingua franca (ELF), Jenkins (2007: 141) reports how

Hong Kong Institute of Education, Department of English, 10 Lo Ping Road, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected] Brunei Darussalam, Department of English and Applied Linguistics, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong, BE 1410,

Brunei. E-mail: [email protected]

Hong Kong Institute of Education, Department of English, 10 Lo Ping Road, Hong Kong. E-mail: [email protected]

C 2008 The Author. Journal compilation C 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA02148, USA.


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362 Andy Kirkpatrick, David Deterding, and Jennie Wong

recordings ranged in length from between one minute thirty-six seconds to two minutestwenty-nine seconds.

One caveat should be mentioned here. These speakers are reasonably well-educatedEnglish majors from the Hong Kong Institute of Education. They have all reached theEnglish level required in the local exam that teachers of English in government schools

need to take. No claim is being made that the same results would be found for Hong Kongspeakers as a whole, as there are many people in Hong Kong who have a basic ability inEnglish but are considerably less competent than the speakers investigated here.

Worksheets based on the conversations were then designed. The worksheets includedlistening comprehension questions along with questions asking the listeners their views onthe intelligence and likeability of the speakers. Sample copies of a transcript and worksheetare provided in the Appendix.

The recordings were then played to two groups of university students in Singapore andto a further two groups in Australia. Two groups in each place were used, as the first grouponly heard the recordings once and the second group heard them twice. The recordings

were played through without pausing.The 19 students in the first Singaporean group (S1) comprised 16 females and 3 males.

Of these, all but 2 indicated that English was their strongest language. The 2 that did notlisted Malay and Cantonese respectively.

The 18 students in the second Singaporean group (S2) comprised 15 females and 3 males.Of these, all but 2 listed English as their strongest language, with the remaining 2 listingMandarin and Chinese respectively.

The Singaporean students were all local Singaporeans. They were English majors takinga first-year module at the National Institute of Education in Singapore as part of theirtraining to become primary schoolteachers.

Unsurprisingly, given the number of international students in Australian universities,the two Australian groups were significantly more heterogeneous. There were 11 studentsin the first Australian group (A1), comprising 7 males and 4 females. Five members ofthe group were Australian first language speakers of English. The remaining 6 comprised3 South Koreans and one student each from Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

The second Australian group (A2) was larger, with 24 students, of whom 8 were maleand 15 female (one student did not tick the gender box). Of these 24 students, 14 werefirst language speakers of English, of whom 11 were Australians with one each fromEngland, New Zealand, and the United States. Four other Australians indicated that theirfirst language was not English, and these languages were Croatian, Filipino, Indonesian,and Indian. The remaining students were made up of 2 Singaporeans, 2 Indonesians, onestudent from Hong Kong, and one from mainland China.

RESULTS

The results concerning intelligibility, intelligence, and likeability will be considered inthat order in separate sections. All percentages are rounded to the nearest full percent.As indicated earlier, the worksheets which the listeners were asked to complete weredesigned, in the main, to test (in Smiths term) the comprehensibility of the speakers. Inother words, they were designed to test whether the listeners were able to note down theexplicit information provided by the speakers. However, some of the questions, includingthe questions on the speakers perceived intelligence, tested the interpretability of the

C 2008 The Author. Journal compilation C 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


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The international intelligibility of Hong Kong English 363

speakers, while others tested the listeners ability to recognise and note down individualwords.

Setting benchmarks to measure relative intelligibility is a subjective process. In his work,Smith (1992) set a mark of 60 per cent as a benchmark for intelligibility. In the earlierstudy on the intelligibility of Singaporean speakers, Kirkpatrick and Saunders (2005) used

a higher benchmark of 80 per cent and we retain this 80 per cent benchmark for this study,where this 80 per cent indicates that four out of five of their answers were judged to becorrect.

INTELLIGIBILITY RESULTS

We will discuss the results for each group of listeners separately before we summarisethe overall results.

Group S1Sixteen of the 19 students in the Singaporean group who heard the recordings only once

(S1) found the Hong Kong speakers to be at least 80 per cent intelligible. This means thatthese speakers achieved an average score of over 80 per cent in the listening comprehensiontests for the six speakers. This figure is even higher for the intelligibility of the femalespeakers. Five listeners scored a full 100 per cent, while 13 others scored more than80 per cent. In other words, only one person in the S1 group scored less than 80 per centin the intelligibility tests for the female speakers, but this person still performed well,achieving 76 per cent. The male speakers, however, were found to be less intelligible thantheir female counterparts, and this matches the finding made with Singaporean speakers

(Kirkpatrick and Saunders 2005). Only one member of the S1 group scored the full100 per cent, 8 scored over 80 per cent, and 9 scored over 60 per cent. Only one listenerscored less than 60 per cent when listening to the male speakers; this was the student wholisted herself as a first language speaker of Malay. It is possible that, as English was nother first language, her level of English was not as high as most of the others.

Group S2

S2 scored even higher percentages than S1, presumably because they listened to therecordings twice. Again the female speakers were found to be more intelligible than the

men, with 4 listeners scoring the full 100 per cent and 9 others scoring more than 90 percent. The lowest intelligibility score was 82 per cent. In contrast, only one listener scoredthe full 100 per cent when listening to the male speakers, but 15 scored more than 80 percent. Only two listeners scored less than that, achieving 79 per cent and 77 per cent.

Groups S1 and S2

Taking the admittedly arbitrary figure of 80 per cent as representing high intelligibility,the overwhelming majority of Singapore listeners found the female Hong Kong speakershighly intelligible, with 18 of the 19 members of S1 the group which heard the recordingsonly once scoring more than 80 per cent. The male speakers were less intelligible thanthe females, and it was here that a second listening helped listeners, with 16 of 18 members



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of S2 scoring more than 80 per cent compared with only 9 of the S1 group. Even so, thismeans that half of S1 found the male speakers highly intelligible and only one personscored less than 60 per cent.

The speakers who were judged most and least intelligible, and some suggested reasonsfor this, are considered later.

Group A1

All 5 of the native English-speaking Australians in A1 found the speakers, on average,more than 80 per cent intelligible, with the range being from 81 per cent to 90 per cent.Of the remaining 6 members of this group, only 2 a South Korean and the Malaysian scored more than 80 per cent. The other 2 South Koreans scored 70 per cent and 59 percent, and the Indonesian and the Brazilian both scored 60 per cent. This shows that 4 ofthe 6 international students found the Hong Kong speakers less intelligible than did thenative speakers. However, only one listener scored less than 60 per cent, even though this

group heard the recordings only once.As with the Singaporean groups, the female speakers were found to be more intelligible

than their male counterparts, with all but one member of the group finding the females moreintelligible than the males. This is particularly marked among the international students,who scored an average of 61 per cent for the male speakers compared with 86 per cent forthe females.

Group A2

The intelligibility results for the male speakers for group A2 have, unfortunately, had

to be discounted, as, for reasons that are unclear, several of the listeners did not answerany of the questions for one of the male speakers and also failed to answer some of thequestions for a second male speaker. However, the results for the female speakers werenot affected. Of the 24 students who listened to the female speakers twice, 19 scored over80 per cent. Thus only 5 of the group found the females speakers less than 80 per centintelligible. These 5 listeners (with their intelligibility scores in brackets) comprised theIndonesian (63 per cent), the mainland Chinese (74 per cent), the Indian (74 per cent), and2 of the native English-speaking Australians (both 79 per cent). The two Singaporeans hadno trouble understanding the Hong Kong speakers, with one scoring the full 100 per cent(only one of 2 people to do so) and the other 89 per cent. The Australian-Filipina scoreda high 95 per cent and the two Indonesians also had little trouble, with one scoring 92 percent and the other 84 per cent. The student from Hong Kong found his compatriots 97 percent intelligible.

The overall average mark for the A2 group was 87 per cent. The differences betweenthe native speakers of English and the others are small, with the native speakers scoring anaverage of 89 per cent and the others an average of 85 per cent. The lowest intelligibilityscore was achieved by the Australian-Indonesian student, with 63 per cent.

Overall intelligibility results

In general, then, we can conclude that, on the basis of these six speakers, educated HongKong English is highly intelligible in contexts outside Hong Kong and to people who may



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not be familiar with Hong Kong voices. For example, the average overall intelligibilityscore for listeners who heard the speakers only once (groups S1 and A1) was 81 per cent.The Hong Kong female speakers are particularly intelligible with these listeners getting anaverage score of 86 per cent. This compares with a lower average intelligibility score forthe males of 74 per cent.

Some tentative conclusions can be made by comparing these results with those of theearlier Singaporean intelligibility research. The Hong Kong speakers appear to be moreintelligible than their Singaporean counterparts, given that only slightly over 50 per cent ofthe groups who listened to the Singaporean data once achieved a score of more than 80 percent (Kirkpatrick and Saunders 2005: 157). This relative lack of intelligibility was borneout when we played the Singaporean recordings to 28 fourth-year English majors in HongKong. Using the same worksheets developed for the Singaporean intelligibility research(Kirkpatrick and Saunders 2005) and playing the recordings only once without pausing,we obtained results that suggest that the Hong Kong listeners found Singaporean speakersharder to understand than the Singaporean listeners found the Hong Kong speakers. For

example, no Hong Kong student achieved an overall score of more than 80 per cent, with17 scoring more than 60 per cent and 11 less than 60 per cent.

This is an interesting indication for two reasons. First, Singaporean English has morestatus as an independent variety than Hong Kong English, and has also been the subject ofmany scholarly descriptions (see Deterding 2007: 93102, for an annotated bibliography).This may mean that Singaporean speakers are more comfortable with their variety andfeel less need to align it with an external standard. Second, Singapore and Hong Kong arefiercely competitive in their desire to assume the mantle of Asias foremost internationalcity, and the fact that English is spoken in both places is crucial to their respective claims.Any research that suggests a higher level of English intelligibility in one place over the

other is bound to raise interest (and, no doubt, a few hackles!). Thus it is crucial that morecomparative research on a larger scale than that attempted here be conducted before theseclaims can be made confidently.

It should, however, also be pointed out that the relatively heterogeneous and cosmopoli-tan nature of Singapore and Australia when compared with Hong Kong may mean thatSingaporeans and Australians are more familiar with a range of varieties of English andtheir associated accents.

The most intelligible and least intelligible

The intelligibility rankings of the individual speakers are similar but not exactly thesame among the four groups of listeners. All four groups (S1, S2, A1, A2) found F1 themost intelligible. (F1 was the first female voice they heard; thus M3 refers to the third malespeaker.) Indeed A1, the Australian group who listened only once to the speakers, found allthree female speakers more intelligible than any of the men, with the ranking coming outas F1, F2, F3, M3, M1, M2. For reasons explained above, only the results for the femalespeakers were available for A2, and their results for the three females showed that theyfound F1 the most intelligible, followed by F2 followed by F3. It should be remembered,however, that they all found all the females highly intelligible.

The results for the two Singaporean groups (S1 and S2) also showed that F1 was the mostintelligible. However, S1 found the third male speaker, M3, the second most intelligibleand S2 found him the third most intelligible. The other difference is that both Singaporean



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groups found M1 the most difficult to understand, while A1 found M2 the most difficult.M3 was the most intelligible male.

As the two male speakers M1 and M2 were found to be the least intelligible, we nowconsider their cases in more detail by identifying areas that the listeners found difficult tounderstand, and suggest reasons for this. Listeners answers are reported exactly as they

appeared on the relevant worksheets.

Intelligibility of speaker M1

Both Singaporean groups scored the least marks when attempting to complete theworksheet while listening to M1. One obvious reason why this might have been the caseis that M1 was the first person they heard, so one would expect them to take some time tobecome familiar both with the Hong Kong accent and also with the nature of the exercise.Certainly, they found answering the opening questions on the worksheet the most difficult;so here we first provide the relevant excerpt from the transcript and then consider the

specific questions that the listeners had trouble with. (In the transcripts, three dots . . .

are used to indicate a pause.)M1s transcript begins:

Int: So M, can you tell us what you did during your last vacation?

M1: Actually I was working as a part-time tutor in a secondary school in Tin Shui Wai, and I had to work

there from the morning, from the morning to the afternoon. In the morning I had to help the . . . to

make some teaching materials and then in the afternoon I have to teach some form four students

. . . yeah to teach them how to do their reading papers as well as the listening papers, yeah . . .

Int: Can you tell us something about the reading paper and listening paper? What do they have to do?

M1: Actually its a kind of drilling exercise. I just distributed some paper for them to do and then maybe

after an hour and a half, and then I just check the answer with them, thats it.

The opening four questions on the worksheet are:

1. What did he do?2. In the morning, what did he do?3. In the afternoon, what did he do?4. What sort of exercise was it?

These opening four questions proved difficult to answer, and one problem the listenershad was simply one of time in trying to note down the necessary information provided inthe opening turn. In addition, an issue arose when the speaker mentioned a local suburb,Tin Shui Wai, as this would have been unfamiliar to the listeners. They may also havebeen distracted when M1 answered a question about a vacation by describing work he haddone. Question 3 proved especially tough. Only three members of the S1 group were ableto complete this question adequately, though the majority of the group (13 out of 19) couldlist at least one of the tasks that M1 discussed. Listening to the speaker a second timehelped, as everyone in the S2 group was able to list at least one of the tasks M1 had to do,though only 7 (out of 18) in this S2 group were able to provide full answers.

Six members of S1 were unable to answer question 4 correctly. Four simply left theirworksheets blank, while the other two guessed from the other information they had heardand gave distribution of papers and about reading papers. In fact, listening a second



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time did not appear to help here, as six members of S2 were also unable to answer thisquestion. Only two left their worksheets blank, however, and the other four tried to usecontextual clues, giving distribute some papers, reading paper, drawing, and doreading exercise.

The listeners in A1 encountered comparable difficulties. For example only four out of

the eleven were able to give a complete answer for question 3, but all were able to listat least one task. Eight were also unable to answer question 4 correctly. Three left theirworksheets blank, but the other five guessed using information they had heard. Theirguesses were reading and listening, give paper, check answers, written exercise,distribute book, and reading listening paper.

The other question that listeners found hard to answer was question 6, Why is hereluctant to say where he went? The relevant excerpt of the transcript reads:

Int: And. . . in. . .rather than last vacation, have you . . . like most people in Hong Kong you seem to

work during the vacation, so have you ever had a holiday?

M1: I just dont know whether I should tell you or not. . .

because I worked too hard in the last vacationthats why I had a trip in September and I skipped some of the classes.

To answer this question correctly, the listeners have to apply some inference skills. Theyhave to realize that the student is talking to a lecturer and therefore may be reluctant tolet him know that he skipped classes to take a vacation. In other words, this questionis testing Smiths notion of interpretability. Even so, 12 of the 19 members of S1answered this question correctly, as did 14 of the 18 members of S2. Group A1 alsofound some problems in answering this question, with 4 out of 11 failing to answerit correctly. Two of these left their worksheets blank and 2 attempted answers, givingworked too hard and slapped classes. (This slapped was the only incorrect attemptat skipped.) Thus, while this question caused some difficulty, the great majority oflisteners were able to answer it correctly, including even those who heard the speaker onlyonce.

Intelligibility of speaker M2

The problems that the listeners encountered for M2 were almost entirely due to recog-nizing or deciphering proper names, as this speaker refers to a number of people. Questions

requiring the listeners to identify the proper names were deliberately included to see howunfamiliar names and sounds would be interpreted by the listeners and we report on thesebelow.

The relevant excerpt of the transcript for M2 is:

M2: My last vacation . . . I have to say my last vacation was the reading week. . . although it was not really

a vacation . . . so in my reading week I went to Nanjing to compete with them, in an intervarsity

debate competition . . . and I went to . . . and I went there with some of my classmates and also . . .

two lecturers, Kathy and Angel . . . well I did quite a number of things there . . . I did the debate . . .

and also I did a speech competition . . . and also I went not just to Nanjing, I went to Suzhou as well

. . . and. . . well I went some famous sights . . . famous sights and famous scenes in Suzhou like the

University of Suzhou and. . .

some other very famous scenes which. . .

I cant remember.



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Among the questions the listeners were asked were these three:

1. Where did he go?2. What were the names of the two lecturers?3. What other city did he go to?

Six members of group S1 were unable to answer the first of these three questions.Two guessed Genting, the name of a Malaysian resort in the hills near Kuala Lumpur,one suggested somewhere in China, and others did not attempt to answer the question.Obviously general knowledge would have played a major role here. Listening to the speakertwice also helped, as only one person in S2 failed to answer this question correctly.

The correct answers for the second of these questions were Kathy and Angel re-spectively. The same five listeners in S1 failed to get either of the names and left theworksheets blank, and one other listener suggested only one name, Katy. The other 13listeners correctly identified both names (one had Kathleen). Listening to the speaker asecond time apparently allowed some listeners enough information to make a guess at thename. While three did leave the question blank, another five made the following attempts:Kelvin, Dathy, Kaffe, Caffey, and Kafi. The appearance of f in three of these guessesarises because M2 uses [f] in the middle of this name, a common feature of the phonol-ogy of the English of Hong Kong, where [f] often occurs in words where many varietiesof English would have [T] (Bolton and Kwok 1990; Hung 2000; Deterding et al. 2008).Interestingly, this feature is not found in other East Asian varieties of English, where useof [t] or [s] as a replacement for [T] is more common (Deterding and Kirkpatrick 2006;Deterding 2006), but it is increasingly found in the English of young people in England(Przedlacka 2002). Only two listeners in S2 were unable to identify the name Angel,leaving the worksheet blank.

Seven of the 11 listeners in Group A1 found the names of the lecturers difficult, with6 leaving their worksheets blank and the seventh (one of the South Koreans) suggestingclassmate and lector.

The third question of these three required the answer Suzhou. Only 5 members ofS1 were unable to identify the sounds here. Three left their worksheets blanks, one gaveBeijing, and the fifth wrote S??jel. Only 2 members of S2 were unable to correctlyidentify the name, and their attempts were Shunjau and Shuozhuo respectively. Thelisteners of A1 did worse than their Singaporean counterparts here, but, again, generalknowledge is likely to have played a part, as Singapore has established a technology parkin Suzhou, a fact that is well known to many Singaporeans but not to Australians. In any

event, only 4 of the 11 members of group A1 were able to correctly identify Suzhou. Of theremaining 7, 3 left blanks and the others wrote Siaojiao, Shojo, Seojo, and Suza.

In conclusion, although the two male speakers M1 and M2 were the ones for whom thelisteners found it hardest to obtain a high score, the reasons for this might well lie in thefact that M1 was the first Hong Kong speaker the listeners heard, and that M2 mentioneda number of proper names that are probably unfamiliar to many of the listeners.

INTELLIGENCE RESULTS

As part of the worksheet, the listeners were asked to indicate whether they thoughtthe speaker was intelligent and to say why. One issue here is that the listeners may have



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assumed that the researchers were hoping for positive answers. However, the numberof negative answers for one particular speaker, coupled with the fact that the listenerswere often able to provide reasons based on what they had actually heard, suggest thatthey answered these questions from their own perspectives rather than trying to please theresearchers.

Despite being ranked as one of the least intelligible although it needs to be rememberedthat this is relative and, given the comments made immediately above, this ranking itselfis open to doubt M2 was considered the most intelligent. He was ranked as intelligentby 18 of the S1 group, 16 of the S2 group, and 10 of the A1 group. In other words, 44 of48 listeners considered him to be intelligent. M3 was ranked the second most intelligent(42 of the listeners described him so). The intelligence order in which the remainingfour speakers were ranked was F3 (39), F2 (35), M1 (31), and F1 (26). F1, who it willbe remembered was found to be the most intelligible speaker, was therefore described asintelligent by only slightly over half of the listeners. She was also explicitly described asnot intelligent by the most listeners (11), with F2 being described so by five listeners,

M1 and M2 by two each, and F3 by one. No one explicitly described M3 as unintelligent.Table 1 summarizes the positive responses for intelligence, and Table 2 ranks the negativeresponses. In each case, the numbers beneath the groups and alongside the speakers referto the number of listeners who indicated this attribute for the speaker. Thus, for example,18 people from the first Singaporean group (S1) indicated that they thought M2 wasintelligent.

We now turn to a consideration of the reasons the listeners gave for their decisions. Animportant finding here is that they often justified their decisions about a particular speakers

Table 1. Number of responses in which the listeners answered Yes to the question Do you think this

person is intelligent?

Speaker S1 S2 A1 Total

M2 18 16 10 44

M3 18 14 10 42

F3 17 15 8 40

F2 17 12 6 35

M1 11 12 8 31

F1 8 8 10 26

Table 2. Number of responses in which the listeners answered No to the question Do you think this

person is intelligent?


F1 4 6 1 11

F2 0 3 2 5

M1 0 1 1 2

M2 1 1 0 2

F3 0 0 1 1

M3 0 0 0 0



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intelligence by citing something they had learned about the person from the content ofwhat they had said. This also gave a good indication that they had successfully interpretedwhat the speakers were saying. That is to say, the answers to the questions requiring thelisteners to make judgements about the intelligence (and likeability) of the speakers, and togive reasons for their decisions, provided good additional evidence of the extent to which

they had fully understood the messages the speakers were conveying, even if some of thedetails regarding the names of people and places may have been missed. For example, thereasons the first five listeners in group S1 gave for judging M2 as intelligent included thoselisted below (the letters in brackets indicate the group name and the individual listenernumber; thus S1:1 means the first person in group S1):

Yes, he took part in debate and won best speaker so he must be intelligent (S1:1)

Yes. Winner of debate must have some intelligence (S1:2)

Yes. He is able to understand the interviewer and answer intelligently (S1:3)

Yes. Fluent, spontaneous response (S1:4)

Yes. He took part in the competition and won something out of it (S1:5)

The first five students in S2 gave similar reasons:

Yes, because he represented his school in an intervarsity competition (S2:1)

Yes, he can think fast and was the best debater in competition (S2:2)

Yes. He seem to have won the best debater award (S2:3)

Yes. Best debater (S2:4)

Yes. He was the best debater etc. (S2:5)

The students in the group A1 gave comparable reasons:

Yes (A1:1) (Note that this is the only person in this sample who did not provide a reason for their

judgment.)

Yes. Sound intelligent. Understanding question (A1:2) (This was one of the South Koreans)

Yes. Because he won the best debater award (A1:3)

Yes. He does debating (A1:4)

Yes. Competed in a debating comp. (A1:5)

Reasons for judging F3 intelligent included:

Yes. She spends her holidays reading! Reading = intelligent and Sherlock Holmes! (S1:1)

Yes, those who can read must be clever (S1:2)

Yes, she sounds well-read and passionate about what she reads (S1:9)

Yes. She reads books on all subjects (S1:15)

Yes, She seems really to feel a book when she reads rather than just simply reading it (S2:3).

Yes. She reads a lot and able to give her own view (S2:17)

One listener, however, used her reading to justify classifying her as unintelligent.

No. She read nothing but fiction (A1:6)



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Listeners therefore also gave reasons to justify evaluating speakers as unintelligent.While almost everyone considered M2 intelligent, there were rare exceptions, as thisexample shows.

No. Because no wise to skip classes and go to tour (A1:3).

Table 2 above shows that F1 was judged as being unintelligent by 11 listeners. Thisis despite being the most intelligible. Here is a selection of their reasons, many of whichactually seem to be more relevant to the likeability than to the intelligence question, as someseemed to think she was arrogant in some way. Although one listener (A1:8) evaluated F1as intelligent because she speaks her mind, most saw this negatively.

No. Puts people down (S1:9)

No. She thinks she is smart (S1:17)

No. She gives answers to the questions that are not really related (S2:3)

No, she thought she was good in English (S2:4)

In contrast, some made judgements about the intelligence of the speakers based on theiraccent or the way they spoke, as these examples show.

Yes. For a Hong Kong citizen, he speaks fairly well English. Understandable (S1:18 justifying evaluating

M1 as intelligent.)

Yes. Pronunciation is crisp though accent is strong (S2:7 justifying evaluating M1 as intelligent.)

Average. Cant really understand his speech at times (S2:9 justifying evaluating M1 as being of average

intelligence.)

Yes, I understand her English, like British English (S1:10 justifying evaluating F3 as intelligent.)He sounds intelligent. Speaks in the way I associate with intelligent people. Clear, loud and understand-

able with good strong voice, deep voice helps a lot (S1:1 justifying evaluating M3 as intelligent.)

Many of those who judged F1 as being unintelligent gave reasons based on her way ofspeaking, as these examples show:

Average. She cant speak well. Her pronunciation is less standard compared to the rest (S1:8)

Not so, does not speak English well (S1:15)

No. Trying to speak with accent! (S2:12)

No. Her pronunciation of certain words are wrong. Some words are grammatically wrong (S2:14).No. Maybe too much final fricatives (S2:17)

No. Repeated words and stuttering (A1:10).

However, some listeners rated her intelligent because of the way she spoke.

Yes. Her spoken English is well understood (S1:10)

Quite intelligent I think. She sounds confident in her speech and willing to share information (S1:12)

Yes. Speaks well (S1:19)

Yes. She speaks relatively fluent English (S2:10)

She can speak pretty well. She thinks her command of the English language is good (S2:15)

Yes. Communicate well (A1:11)



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As we shall see below when we consider the relative likeability of the speakers, F1 wasthe speaker who gave rise to the strongest emotions.

LIKEABILITY RESULTS

Listeners were also asked to indicate whether they thought they would like the speakerand to give reasons for their answer. Here M3 received the most votes, with 32 listenersindicating that they thought they would like him. M1 and F2 received 31 and 30 votesrespectively, F3 received 27, M2 received 25, and F1 with 18 votes was considered theleast likeable. F1 also received the highest number of explicitly negative votes with 25,so she had the dubious distinction of being considered both the least intelligent and theleast likeable, although she was the most intelligible. F1s case is discussed in more detailbelow.

Generally, however, the link between intelligence and likeability does not hold, asthe person ranked the most intelligent, M2, was also thought to be the second leastlikeable. Similarly the person ranked as second least intelligent, M1, was considered tobe extremely likeable, with 31 people saying they thought this. Table 3 summarizes thepositive responses, and Table 4 shows the negative ones.

We now turn to considering the reasons the listeners gave for their decisions. Just aswhen judging whether a person was intelligent or not, the listeners also gave reasons whenassessing their likeability. Again, the majority of the reasons given were derived from thecontent of what the speaker said. Here we will focus on the responses for M3, and thenconsider those for F1.

Table 3. Number of responses in which the listeners answered Yes to the question Do you think youwould like this person?


M3 14 10 8 32

M1 10 14 7 31

F2 13 11 6 30

F3 12 11 6 29

M2 10 8 7 25

F1 6 4 8 18

Table 4. Number of responses in which the listeners answered No to the question Do you think you

would like this person?


F1 12 11 2 25

M2 8 2 2 12

M3 3 5 1 9

F2 0 4 2 6

M1 4 1 0 5

F3 2 3 0 5



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Likeability of speaker M3

Table 3 above indicates that M3 was judged to be the most likeable of all the speakers.Below are some examples of the reasons people gave for judging him as likeable:

Yes. He shared more than just answered questions seemed interested in the interview (S1:7)

Yes. Hes someone whod play it safe by working out the details or the costs of a trip. Hes a carefulperson, not a risk-taker (S1:8)

Yes. He seems to be a responsible person and willing to word hard (S1:12)

I would, given he makes an effort to enrich himself, take in industry experience during the vacation

instead of idling away at home (S1:13)

Yes. He has interests in many fields (S2:3)

Yes. I want to go to Japan too and he sounds humble (S2:10)

Yes. He likes/has an interest in Japan (A1:6)

Some listeners, however, were not impressed by M3s apparently hard-working nature,as illustrated by these reasons for not finding him likeable:

No, he sounds like a workaholic (S1:15)

No, too busy (S1:17)

No, as he is a workaholic (S2:2)

No he seems to workaholic. 25 days a roll is crazy! (S2:17)

A bit, but he would be too busy for friendship (A1:7)

Some of the reasons given were linked to the speech styles of the speakers:

Yes. He sounds enthusiastic and lively from his speech (S1:3)

Yes. He speaks pretty well and I can understand what he says (S1:5)

Four speakers said that they thought they would like him because he sounds friendly,but others thought the opposite:

No, he didnt sound friendly (S1:14)

OK. He doesnt sound as friendly as Male 1 (S2:15)

No. Does not sound very friendly (S2:18)

One thought he sounded friendly, but was not convinced he was likeable:

Maybe only sounds like a nice guy, but real hardworking (S2:16)

Likeability of speaker F1

As Table 4 above shows, F1 was thought to be not likeable by 25 listeners. This representsmore than 50 per cent. Almost all these listeners indicated that they would not like herbecause of their perception that she was somehow arrogant.

Not really, she seem proud as she imputed that some did not speak as well as her (S1:7)

Not really. She may think a world of herself and may be a showy person (S1:8)

No, egoistic and loud mouth (S1:9)



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No. She seems like a proud person. Empty vessels make most noise (S1:11)

No sounds condescending. Doesnt speak that well but prefers to be a better English speaker than the

rest (S1:13)

No shes a tat too proud of her language proficiency (S1:18)

No, she appears a bit too loud and proud (S2:6)

No, she sounds a little conceited (S2:9)

No. Too enthusiastic, but boastful (S2:13)

We suspect these judgments arise from F1s answer to the question she was asked aboutthe language used at the international seminar she attended in India:

English, and. . . yeah, English, but I can say that most of them speak in English, but not perfectly well

. . . as well as I do, and we just try to communicate, using the gesture, and some drawings . . . but almost

everyone of us know a bit English, at least, and this is our language that we use in girl guiding all over

the world.

The listeners may well have considered her arrogant from her saying that she spokeEnglish better than the others. In contrast, a shared experience was one reason for f indingher likeable:

Yes. I was a scout (A1:6)

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

While we have here focused on just a small sample of the reasons that the listeners

gave for classifying certain speakers as the most intelligent and likeable and the leastintelligent and least likeable, we should note that the great majority of listeners wereprepared to give reasons justifying their decisions on all the speakers. The total number ofpossible responses is 576 (a total of 48 listeners could each give two responses about eachof 6 speakers). Blank responses, and those that simply said something like Yes, No,Neutral, or Cant tell but gave no supporting reasons for their decisions, totalled only110. In other words, the listeners provided 466 reasons for justifying their decisions; thiswould strongly suggest that they were engaged by the speakers and found them highlyintelligible, as the reasons given were based on what that had heard.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

We conclude, then, by arguing that the English of these speakers is highly intelligible(comprehensible) in international contexts. The related conclusion is that the multilingualvariety of English as represented by these six speakers, influenced though it may be bytheir L1 Cantonese, is linguistically acceptable as a model in the Hong Kong classroomas it appears to present so few problems for intelligibility in international settings andcontexts, though of course it would be valuable if listening results could be obtained fromlisteners in a wider range of places, such as continental Europe or Africa, where peoplewould be likely to be less familiar with the Hong Kong style of pronunciation.

However, as reported earlier in the paper, non-native speakers remain very cautiousabout accepting a non-native speaker model for the classroom. Scholars who have produced



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theories on the developmental stages of new varieties of English (e.g. Kachru 1992; Moag1992; Schneider 2003) are all agreed that the acceptance of the local variety as a classroommodel takes place only in the later stages of the development of the variety. This remainstrue even though it has been well established that nowadays the majority of Englishlanguage users in the world are not native speakers but speakers of other languages who

use English as a means of communication (Graddol 2006). Despite this, the lingua francause of English by multilingual speakers is commonly considered a deficient type of English(Seidlhofer 2001), even though research suggests that lingua franca users appear able tocommunicate extremely effectively across linguistic and cultural boundaries (Meierkord2004; Kirkpatrick 2007b).

More research needs to be undertaken in order to examine the international intelligibilityof new varieties of English, including the English spoken by multilinguals in multilingualsettings. In particular, research into the international intelligibility of the English of multi-lingual local teachers of English on a much greater scale than that reported here could helpdemonstrate that, linguistically and functionally, the English of appropriately trained teach-

ers such as these can serve as an appropriate classroom model for multilingual learners.Such research might then lead to a social acceptance albeit gradual of these varietiesas suitable classroom models.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was supported by a research grant (RG 32/05-06) provided by the Hong KongInstitute of Education. We would also like to acknowledge the help of Toni Dobinson, KatieDunworth, and Paul Mercieca of Curtin University, Perth, Australia.

We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their extremely useful

comments.

REFERENCES

Bolton, Kingsley, and Kwok, Helen (1990) The dynamics of the Hong Kong accent: social identity and sociolinguisticdescription. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 1, 14772.

Deterding, David (2005) Listening to Estuary English in Singapore. TESOL Quarterly 39, 42540.Deterding, David (2006) The pronunciation of English by speakers from China. English World-Wide 27, 17598.Deterding, David (2007) Singapore English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Deterding, David, and Kirkpatrick, Andy (2006) Emerging South-East Asian English and intelligibility. World Englishes

25, 391409.

Deterding, David, and Low, Ee Ling (2005) The NIE Corpus of Spoken Singapore English. In David Deterding, AdamBrown, and Low Ee Ling (eds.), English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a Corpus (pp. 16). Singapore: McGraw-Hill.

Deterding, David, Wong, Jennie, and Kirkpatrick, Andy (2008) The pronunciation of Hong Kong English. EnglishWorld-Wide 28, 14875.

Giles, Howard, and Powesland, Peter F. (1975) Speech Style and Social Evaluation. London: Academic Press.Golombek, Paula, and Rehn Jordan, Stephanie (2005) Becoming black lambs not parrots: a poststructuralist orien-

tation to intelligibility and identity. TESOL Quarterly 39, 51333.Graddol, David (2006) English Next. London: British Council.Hung, Tony T. N. (2000) Towards a phonology of Hong Kong English. World Englishes 19, 33756.Hung, Tony T. N. (2002) English as a global language and the issue of international intelligibility. Asian Englishes 5,

417.Jenkins, Jennifer (2007) English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kachru, Braj B. (1992) Models for non-native Englishes. In Braj B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue: English AcrossCultures (pp. 4874). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.



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Kirkpatrick, Andy (2007a) World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English LanguageTeaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kirkpatrick, Andy (2007b) The communicative strategies of ASEAN speakers of English as a lingua franca. In DavidPrescott, Andy Kirkpatrick, Isabel Martin, and Azirah Hashim (eds.), English in Southeast Asia: Literacies, Literaturesand Varieties (pp. 11837). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Kirkpatrick, Andy, and Saunders, Neville (2005) The intelligibility of Singaporean English: a case study in an Australianuniversity. In David Deterding, Adam Brown, and Low Ee Ling (eds.), English in Singapore: Phonetic Research on a

Corpus (pp. 15362). Singapore: McGraw-Hill.Levis, John (2005) Changing contexts and shifting paradigms in pronunciation teaching. TESOL Quarterly 39, 36977.Meierkord, Christiane (2004) Syntactic variation in interactions across international Englishes. English World-Wide 25,

10932.Moag, Rodney F. (1992) The life cycle of non-native Englishes: a case study. In Braj B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue:

English Across Cultures (pp. 23344). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Pickering, Lucy (2006) Current research on intelligibility in English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied

Linguistics 26, 21933.Przedlacka, Joanna (2002) Estuary English? Frankfurt am Main: Lang.Schneider, Edgar W. (2003) The dynamics of new Englishes: from identity construction to dialect rebirth. Language 79,

23381.Seidlhofer, Barbara (2001) Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca.International

Journal of Applied Linguistics 11, 13357.

Smith, Larry E. (1992) Spread of English and issues of intelligibility. In Braj B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue: EnglishAcross Cultures (pp. 7590). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Smith, Larry E., and Nelson, Cecil L. (2006) World Englishes and issues of intelligibility. In Braj B. Kachru, YamunaKachru, and Cecil L. Nelson (eds.), The Handbook of World Englishes (pp. 4285). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Smith, Larry E., and Rafiqzad, Khalilulla (1979) English for cross-cultural communication: the question of intelligibility.TESOL Quarterly 13, 37180.

APPENDIX

Sample transcript (F1)

Int: So what did you do on your last vacation?FI: um . . . in the last summer vacation, I went to India for a exchange programme whichis organized by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. I went thereon behalf of the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association as the youth representative.The purpose that I was going there is to attend the seminar named Juliette LowSeminar, and the topic of the seminar is about leadership in the worldwide setting,especially on youth. So how we as a youth can be a leader in a worldwide setting.And there are lot of seminars, sharing, presentations, games, visits during the aboutone and a half week. And its so memorable and exciting, and what I feel . . . feltmost greatly is that I can meet friends all around the world because each places canonly send one representative to join that seminar, and there are altogether forty-fourgirls in my age

. . .around in my age and they are from forty-four countries. So all

forty-four girls join together for all the activities in all the one and a half week, andso excited.

Int: What language did you use to communicate?F1: English, and. . . yeah, English, but I can say that most of them speak in English,

but not perfectly well . . . as well as I do, and we just try to communicate, using thegesture, and some drawings . . . but almost everyone of us know a bit English, atleast, and this is our language that we use in girl guiding all over the world.

Int: So it was the Juliette Low?F1: Yeah, Juliette Low Seminar, actually Juliette Low is the founder of Girl Guides

of the United States many many years ago. And there is a funding called Juliette



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Low Friendship Funding, which sponsored this seminar, and this seminar run everythree years. And we have a theme for each seminar. . . for all the seminar . . . yeah.

Int: So what was the theme for this?F1: Leadership . . . yeah, value-based leadership in international setting, and its focus-

ing on youth aged about eighteen to twenty-five.

Int: Was your visit to India your first overseas trip?F1: This is not my first overseas trip, but this my first experience in India, and being

the only one who travel by myself is quite excited, and even on the plane Im theonly Hongkongnese, Hong Kong people on the plane and . . . but this a memorableexperience . . . yeah . . . and I treasure it very much.

Sample worksheet and answer key (F1)

Interviewer: So what did you do on your last vacation?

Where did she go? IndiaWho organized the trip? World association of girl guides/scoutsWhat was the seminar topic? LeadershipHow many girls were involved? 44How many countries were represented? 44What language did they use? EnglishWho was Juliette Low? Founder of the US girl guidesHow often does the seminar take place? Every 3 years

Total : 8

Other questions

Do you think this person is intelligent? Say whyDo you think you would like this person? Say why

(Received 7 January 2008.)


hongkong english

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