Standard accent or Intelligibility: Desiderata for International Communication in English as a Foreign Language with special reference to the situation in Pakistan

Standard accent or Intelligibility: Desiderata for International Communication in English as a Foreign Language with special reference to the situation in Pakistan

Iqbal, Zafar

The main objective of learning a foreign language these days is to acquire communicative competence in such a language in real life situations. Being the most important lingua franca, English is the most sought- after foreign language in the contemporary world. There are, of course, two main options in pursuing this goal in countries like Pakistan. The so-called elite class of the society which always tends to set its self apart from the general masses and in some ways still wants to promote the colonial legacy wants to adopt the standard accent of English in their communications which means either ‗general American‘ or British ‗RP‘. The general public perforce resorts to ‗Pingilsh‘ due to many social constraints and pursues the criteria of mutual intelligibility, as a benchmark in speaking English as a foreign language. The aim of this paper is to highlight the significance of ‗Pinglinsh‘ as a model to be followed in the country uniformly in its entire system of education.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

679