{"id":1921,"date":"2012-01-04T10:00:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1921"},"modified":"2012-01-03T10:00:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T08:00:46","slug":"the-pronunciation-of-english-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1921","title":{"rendered":"The pronunciation of English around the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
The pronunciation of English around the world<\/strong>: Geo-social applications of the natural phonetics and tonetics method. By Luciano Canepari<\/strong>. (LINCOM studies in English linguistics 16.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2010. Pp. 700. ISBN 9783929075755<\/a>. $217 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Stephen Laker<\/a><\/strong>, Kyushu University<\/em><\/p>\n

This volume by Luciano Canepari describes over 200 accents of English, including approximately 120 native-speaker accents (mainly from North America and the British Isles), sixty-one bilingual accents (e.g. from the Philippines, India, and Malta), and twenty foreign accents (e.g. from France, Turkey, and Japan).<\/p>\n

The first half of the book (13\u2013249) outlines the aims of the volume and introduces the author\u2019s phonotonetic transcription system. The author argues that his Canepari International Phonetic Alphabet (can<\/em>IPA) has several advantages over the official International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For example, it indicates more phonetic differences with distinct symbols, thus doing away with an array of diacritics (as used in http:\/\/www.soundcomparisons.com\/<\/a>), which relativize existing consonant and vowel symbols rather than specifying core qualities. With can<\/em>IPA it is also unnecessary to use phonetic symbols for purposes for which they were not intended (e.g. the official IPA front open vowel symbol [a] is often used to designate a central open vowel instead, because an open vowel symbol is wanting). Indeed the clear distinction of sounds through specific symbols becomes vitally important when comparing and contrasting many different languages and dialects.<\/p>\n

The author proceeds to use can<\/em>IPA to describe three standard or neutral accents: British English, American English, and International English (IE). Interestingly, C\u2019s main accent of reference throughout the book is IE, a term used in different ways by different linguists. C thinks of it as an accent \u2018somehow intermediate\u2019 between the neutral British and American accents (13) though \u2018slightly more American-like\u2019 (29). He goes on to note that it is \u2018mainly based on CNN pronunciation [\u2026] of newsreaders, not local correspondents\u2019 (29). C\u2019s discussion of IE is long, but since this is not yet a generally recognized accent type, recordings of IE or the names of some CNN anchors who use it ought to have been provided, so they could be listened to. Discussion is no substitute for authentic data.<\/p>\n

The second half of the volume (250\u2013651) surveys about 200 so-called territorial accents (i.e. regionally-colored bilingual and foreign accents) from around the world. The range and number of accents covered is impressive and includes many lesser-known varieties, such as provincial Native-American, Celtic, South African, and foreign-accented Englishes. Yet many of these reports are very short, sometimes only one page, and no information is given about the speakers of the accents described, so the reader has no contact with or control over the primary data (unlike with other available handbooks). Furthermore, no reader-friendly lexical phoneme sets or transcriptions of a set passage are offered to illustrate the accents in context. These absences could yet be remedied if sound files were made available, either on an accompanying CD-ROM or online. Without sound files, the intonation patterns\u2014something that other handbooks often ignore altogether\u2014are particularly difficult to assess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pronunciation of English around the world: Geo-social applications of the natural phonetics and tonetics method. By Luciano Canepari. (LINCOM studies in English linguistics 16.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2010. Pp. 700. ISBN 9783929075755. $217 (Hb). Reviewed by Stephen Laker, Kyushu University This volume by Luciano Canepari describes over 200 accents of English, including approximately 120 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921\/revisions\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}