Article published In:
Pragmatics and SocietyVol. 6:4 (2015) ► pp.615–636
Consonant clusters and intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca in Japan
Phonological modifications to restore intelligibility in ELF
This is a qualitative study of the relationship between consonant cluster articulation and intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca interactions in Japan (Jenkins 2000; Matsumoto 2011). Some research has claimed that the full articulation of consonant clusters in lexeme-initial and lexeme-medial position is critical to the maintenance of intelligibility (Jenkins 2000, 2002, 2007; Walker 2010; Deterding 2013). Using conversation analytic methodology to examine a corpus of repair sequences in interactions among English as a Lingua Franca speakers at a Japanese university, this study claims that consonant elision in consonant clusters in lexeme-initial, lexeme-medial, and lexeme-final position can attenuate intelligibility, and that the insertion of an elided consonant into a word that was oriented to as unintelligible can help restore intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca.
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Galante, Angelica & Enrica Piccardo
2022. Teaching pronunciation: toward intelligibility and comprehensibility. ELT Journal 76:3 ► pp. 375 ff. 
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