4 Phonostylistics in a second language

According to the popular view, phonostylistic processes are automatic, phonetically conditioned, serve ease of articulation, and as such they arise automatically at a given stage of second language competence. There is a number of problems connected with this view, however. Firstly, phonostylistic processes are language-specific. The same function is served by various means across languages, but also within a language. Languages decide for some out of many ways to overcome articulatory difficulty, which is demonstrated by language-specific speaker-friendly casual speech processes. For instance, a coronal stop or fricative palatalises easily and even coalesces with the following palatal glide within words and across word boundaries in English (cf. would you, as you, immediately, etc.) whereas in Polish this never happens (kot ją does not become kocią). Thus, the choice of a process serving ease of articulation in L2 cannot be random (and thus cannot be automatic). This means that even if the learner is successful in targeting second language underlying intentions (e.g., with the help of the methods outlined above, working against «repair»), still the second language casual speech processes will not necessarily be triggered, since there is more than one «natural pronunciation» (phonetically motivated one) resulting from those intentions.

Secondly, the problem with the acquisition of phonostylistics of a second language is that the level of attention in a SL does not drop low enough to trigger a natural application of those processes. Even in a natural setting of SLA, certain forms get fossilized before they get the chance to be productively derived. Once such fossilization happens, the subsequent drop in attention due to the natural setting conditions does not bring the expected application of the casual speech processes.

L1 interference is stronger in casual speech (if a learner manages to reach casual speech level) due to the lack of or difficulty in control over articulation. A vicious circle arises: we want the learners to reach casual style (correlated with low level of attention), but at the same time we want them to apply L2 processes and not succumb to L1 interference (caused by low level of attention).

Additionally, phonostylistic processes are the most difficult to decode from the non-native language input (cf. Figure 1 above). A frequent result of this difficulty is learning lexicalized versions of utterances with processes already present in them without the learners realizing this, e.g. L2 English Would you like..., with palatalization and yod-coalescence already applied.

The primary reason, thus, for teaching phonostylistic processes is to enhance this decoding ability, i.e. to facilitate perception and enable the learner to establish an underlying representation. In this way, teaching phonostylistics creates a bridge towards learning phonology of a second language in general.

5 Experiments

In a series of experiments, since 1984, (Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, see Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 1990) I investigated the role of formal vs. natural setting in SLA. The experiments showed that natural setting learners (there were 21 subjects) did not differentiate among styles and used rote-learned, lexicalized versions of casual speech forms with no evidence for a productive application of casual speech processes. For instance, they produced assimilated form in Tell me what you want, but not in Has your letter come, What’s your weight? Don’t miss your train. Formal setting learners (20 subjects), on the other hand, demonstrated some productivity in the application of phonostylistic processes in their English, which pointed to the effectiveness of formal instruction, training and exercise.

Zborowska (1997) obtained statistically significant progress in perception and production of basic casual speech processes of English in Polish learners due to the regular explicit training in phonostylistics (she compared an experimental group with a control one whose members received a traditional instruction).

Blanco, Carrillo & Gayoso (1999) showed that phono-metaphonological training raised substantially the metaphonological awareness of Spanish school children learning English, which proved very helpful to the children in all production skills, i.e. reading, writing and pronunciation.

Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Weckwerth and Zborowska (1999) reported that students of English found the metalinguistic knowledge they acquired in a descriptive grammar course very useful in learning practical skills, i.e. in perfecting their performance. For instance, out of 62 students, 40 acknowledged metacompetence as background for performance (cf. the quote from one of the subjects: «theoretical knowledge helps to create a mental image of how sounds are produced»), 10 confirmed that metacompetence helped them in acquiring connected speech phenomena.

Linda Shockey (1997) conducted a perception experiment of gated reduced speech by native and non-native speakers of English and showed that while native listeners unravelled the reductions to arrive at the correct input, non-native listeners practically did not. The experimental sentence was: The scree [m] play di [n] resemble the book at all. She concluded that exposure to a range of inputs which are phonetically different but phonologically the same (cf. Figure 1 again) will aid comprehension of naturally-varying native speech. I would reinforce her conclusion and add explicit training to pure exposure.

Summing up, if we take into consideration both the idea of working against «repair» by the learner and the above discussed «metacompetence» issue, we may propose a basic two-way phonostylistic distinction relevant to the learner:

- near-intentional speech = is a formal style (listener-oriented), for which the naturalness principle defines the obligatory minimum of processes (basically, language-specific allophonic processes); the learner uses L1 intentions and processes as well as «repair» at the beginning of acquisition; s / he needs to ultimately learn to hear SL intentions and to apply SL processes to derive SL productions

- average speech = is a casual style (speaker-oriented); this is a style which we use most often in every-day life; it is correlated with a low level of attention paid to the way of speaking; the learner hears the strings either as above (here «repair» may be successful if L1 and L2 happen to have the same casual speech process, e.g. nasal assimilation) or at their «face value» (since what s / he hears does not match any familiar intention either in L1 or in L2, e.g. palatalization and coalescence); it's harder to learn to hear the intention here, since it's further removed from production

«COMPETENCES» IN THE LEARNER’S MIND. A methodological remedy against the difficulties mentioned above and analogous difficulties in other areas of second language grammar is to raise language awareness of the learners, i.e. to make them aware of the «competences» they already possess. Phonostylistics is a particularly good starting point since casual speech is the most common and the most natural register speakers use, cf. average speech. It is exactly via second language casual speech processes that a learner should come to «reconstruct» the second language system, and this with the help of explicit formal instruction. If the instruction concerns formal speech only, the learner will hardly succeed with unravelling the real language input.

L1. Language awareness can be raised through the mediation of the first language (L1) whose positive role in SLA should be emphasized. For instance, realizing the existence of phonostylistics in the mother tongue activates self-organizing capacities of the language system.

Thus, in the case of teaching English to native speakers of a given language, the learners’ L1 should constitute an important fundament of the teaching procedure. L1 corpora and descriptions as well as contrastive L1-L2 analyses are a prerequisite for the preparation of appropriate materials.

Dialects and other L2’s. It is easier to raise the linguistic awareness of those learners who already possess the ability of code switching, either inter-dialectal or inter-lingual, by drawing their attention to this ability. Code switching could perpetuate to yet another code - an L2 in question, especially if the new code is typologically cognate. The importance of the learner’s local dialect as a determinant of learning characteristics has been pointed out, for instance, by James and Kettemann (1983: 9). Students should be taught how to use their dialectal base in the learning of a second language. Code switching between dialect and standard should be used to their advantage rather than disturb the acquisition process. Here for instance one may think of an advantage speakers of Hawaiian Creole English have due to their ability of code-switching between American English and HCE.

Similarly, prior knowledge of other languages should be taken advantage of. Thus, the most suitable native language and prior language(s) input should be selected to serve as basis for deriving second language forms.³ Again, speakers of HCE would have an advantage for instance in learning Japanese (e.g. due to the tendency to open syllable structure in HCE, among others; cf. Odo 1977). In general, multilingualism of Hawai`i creates very favourable circumstances for language learning.

Socio-pragmatics of L2. Above sections emphasized the teaching about L2 by means of reference to L1 as well as to other languages and dialects known by the learners. Another important aspect of teaching about L2 (raising the awareness of L2) is not to isolate grammar from its actual context. Especially when teaching in the formal setting, grammatical processes should not be taught «raw», but should always be placed in their respective socio-pragmatic framework of usage.

CONCLUSION. In this paper I have claimed that speech is in the ear of the listener. Only if we properly understand mental activities of the learner confronted with SL input can we help him / her in successful acquisition of a SL. We need to understand and aid perception in order to trigger desired production.

What is a successful acquisition of a second language, however? Does the learner, for instance, lose his / her foreign accent when s / he stops to use the «engineered» intentions and starts to perceive the expected L2 ones instead? Is this a necessary prerequisite to acquire second language phonology? As a final note, let us try to specify what can actually be meant by the term native speaker of a language.

A native speaker (NS) is a person who uses a given language without hesitation: s / he possesses one stable form of pronunciation (would vary styles, or even dialects, but in each of them would always hit the target) and never ponders about quality of a sound (no self-reflection, or self-correction). S / he also never ponders about how to react in a given situation: acts spontaneously by means of a spoken language, doesn't look for words or phrases or idioms in a casual interaction. Pronunciation is thus only part of the characteristics of a native speaker.

A native speaker does not necessarily speak a version of a language identifiable as a standard or a generally identified dialect: the fact that s / he uses his / her language in the above described manner makes her / him a native speaker, and thus his / her language a version of the language in question (be it a creole, pidgin or dialect / accent); this means that a native speaker's speech may even be accented by a foreign tongue.

Thus, to be a native speaker one needs to immerse in the target language environment in childhood, when one may become a native speaker of a number of languages as long as there is enough exposure to them from the start (including parents, caretakers); however, the exposure should be balanced and evenly distributed over all spheres of life (this is possible e.g. in countries with multiple official languages). Consequently, it is hardly possible to become a native speaker in the full sense of the term by means of a formal training, or even immersion later in life (since all learners are already native speakers of their respective tongues). It is possible, however, to achieve native-like pronunciation by means of a formal training.

In this paper I have made some suggestions concerning the usefulness of phonological knowledge in the acquisition of second language pronunciation.