“Nativeness” and Intelligibility: Impacts of Intercultural Experience Through English as a Lingua Franca on Chinese Speakers’ Language Attitudes

1 Introduction

English is now serving as a lingua franca used by people from all over the world today (Canagarajah, 2006;Ha, 2009;Jenkins, 2000, 2007, 2014;Kirkpatrick, 2006, 2007;Seidlhofer, 2001, 2004, 2011). The globalization of English presents us with a sociolinguistic profile that non-native English Speakers (NNESs) greatly outnumber native English Speakers (NESs). While English has traditionally been associated with NESs’ norms, the question who speaks English today has motivated scholarly concern for “a State of delicate balance” existing between NNESs as the majority of English knowing population and NESs as the source of authority in English language (Jenkins, 2015a;Seidlhofer, 2004, p. 209). A considerable body of literature has been devoted to the argument that NNESs use English in their own way to suit their own purposes, such as identity projection, communicative efficiency, solidarity and sense of humor (Cogo & Jenkins, 2010;Jenkins, 2012;Kaur, 2009). Challenges are thus posed to the Status quo whereby NESs are presumably exclusive “owners” of English and therefore norm providers of English. With the focus on ELF users’ English in its own terms, researchers have uncovered how ELF users, instead of conforming to established norms of English, adapt their way of using English to cope with international communication in various contexts (e.g., Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Mauranen, 2012). The research in ELF offers insights into how the relationship is established between form and function in ELF users’ own Englishes and challenges the assumption that effective communication in English relies on conformity to the norms of Standard native English (Seidlhofer, 2011; c.f. Quirk, 1990).

Undoubtedly, the scholarly insights into the development of ELF have implications for English education in the NNESs’ contexts. Given that the unprecedented global spread of English has caused changes to the role of English for NNESs in intercultural encounters (Jenkins, 2015a;Seidlhofer, 2011), it is time to rethink the subject matter of English education today (Jenkins, 2012;Widdowson, 2003). However, while scholarly debates challenges the exclusive equation between “nativeness” and effective communication (e.g., Jenkins, 2007;Seidlhofer, 2011), it is important to understand how NNESs perceive native English as their reference in the context of English globalization so as to offer the most immediate implications for English classrooms. As Ha (2009, p. 201) claims, while NNESs are in the periphery and NESs at the center, the peripheral “voices must be heard, not assumed.”

Given the large number of Chinese learners and users of English, this paper focuses on the investigation into Chinese perceptions of native English in order to shed light on ELT in NNES contexts. Previous research has demonstrated a widespread aspiration for NES norms-based English among Chinese Speakers (Evans, 2010;He & Li, 2009;He & Miller, 2011;Hu, 2004, 2005;Kirkpatrick & Xu, 2002;Li, 2009;Wang, 2013). Among the very few published studies that address the reasons behind the aspiration for native English, Li (2009) reports a questionnaire study demonstrating that intelligibility and identity are two factors underlying Chinese Speakers’ attitudes towards NES norm-based English. Wang (2013) looks into the exonormative orientations of Chinese participants in her study and considers three contributing factors, which indude the belief in the centrality of NESs in providing norms of English use, the conceptualization of English as a fixed entity and the aspiration for symbolic capital. The said two studies suggest that Chinese Speakers and learners’ aspiration for native English relates to the assumption that only native English satisfies their need for the use of English. In Kramsch’s (2009, p. 9) words, the “myth” of native English “manipulates.”

A recent paper (Wang, 2015) reports on Chinese university students’ attitude change in focus groups and argues that the awareness of ELF and experience of ELF contribute to the shift from a monolingual perspective to a multilingual one. Nevertheless, our understanding of the role of ELF experience in shaping language attitudes is sporadic. In Jenkins’s (2007) research, participants report to be influenced by the feedback they received on their English, whereas Kalocsai (2009) finds that ELF experience motivates ELF users to resist the notion that English enables them to align with NESs, as her participants tend to identify themselves as members of international communities. Ehrenreich (2009) considers students and teachers as language-focused users of English and Professionals as content-focused users, claiming that content-focused users attach less importance to the conformity to native English norms. Among the very few studies focusing on Chinese Speakers’ language attitude change, Gao and her team (2012) investigate Chinese university students’ language attitude change through their work as voluntary helpers during the Olympic Games in 2008. The four-year working experience is found to have impacts on Chinese university students’ identity projection, witnessing those students’ identification and re-identification during the work period. As Gao and her team (2012) point out, those students develop from imitators of native English Speakers to legitimate Speakers of their own English and further to communicators engaging with intercultural communities on the equal footing with native English Speakers. Nevertheless, more needs to be explored. It remains to be understood how Chinese Speakers perceive the form-function relationship in English, given the heated debates on this issue in ELF research (e.g., Cogo, 2008;Saraceni, 2008), and how their awareness of how English works can be developed in experience. This study focuses on Chinese university students and Professionals respectively in terms of their views of English, with particular attention to their linguistic experience in relation to their understanding of English-related linguistic intelligibility.

Towards this end, we shall discuss the relationship between nativeness and effective communication, with the focus on Chinese Speakers’ views of native English. We shall also describe the background of this study before we present the methodology and the analysis of the participants’ narratives of their linguistic experience in relation to their language attitudes. This paper will then discuss the impacts of ELF experience on language attitudes and make pedagogical suggestions.

2 (Non-)nativeness and effective communication

Traditional second language acquisition (SLA) research steers towards the goal that NNESs should develop what Chomsky (1965) describes as ideal native Speaker competence. Nevertheless, the spread of English poses challenge to this undertaking. It has given birth to different Englishes and brought to the fore the debates on (non-) nativeness of English.

Some linguists question the assumption that native English is the ideal choice for intercultural communication and make a vigorous argument that native English is irrelevant for ELF Communications (e.g., Jenkins, 2014;Seidlhofer, 2011). While native English is associated with idealized monolingual native English speech communities, ELF communication takes place in multilingual contexts where people from different first language backgrounds use English to communicate and they use English to suit the social contexts which might not resemble the contexts where ideal native English speaker-hearer communication happens (Seidlhofer, 2011). The scholarly debate underpins the meaning of sociolinguistic context for language use, with the focus on appropriateness rather than correctness in linguistic Performance. Halliday (1997, p. 31) adopts a sociolinguistic perspective and argues that language includes “a ränge of possibilities, an open-ended set of options in behavior that are available to the individual in his existence as social man.” In his view, the context justifies “any particular selection that is made” by a language user from the available choices (Halliday 1997, p. 31). In this sense, the exclusive orientation towards native English is problematic given its limitation on language users’ choices of linguistic forms, that is, only “correct” forms, which conform to native English norms.

Some linguists take issue with such a monolingual focus on English and argue that multilingual perspectives should be appreciated in English language education in various contexts (e.g., Galloway & Rose, 2014;Jenkins, 2015b;Wang, 2013). A monolingual focus on native English relates to the presumption described in Seidlhofer (2011, p. 64) that “English is English is their [i.e., native English Speakers’] English” and the English that suits all contexts of English use and all purposes (Seidlhofer, 2011; original emphasis). Among other initiatives, Hall (2014, pp. 376-377) makes it explicit that “Standard English is not the language itself’ and claims the need for language testing to move beyond the focus on linguistic criteria to address the “effectiveness of resources” that learners draw on to address their purposes of using English. Jenkins (2015b) theorizes ELF by adopting a multilingual approach. In line with this approach, her study on a reputed international university questions the Status quo that Standard native English serves exclusively as the reference for language practice and assessment (Jenkins, 2014). Her major argument is that international students are from multilingual and multicultural backgrounds and, thus, their language needs are diversified and go beyond native Speakers’ English (Jenkins, 2014).

A major argument in favor of nativeness of English is that conforming to native English is necessary for effective communication or intelligibility in communication. As Seidlhofer (2011, p. 50) makes explicit, however, this argument is “not tenable.” Given the space limit, we would like to summarize the counterarguments here. First, NNESs have their right to use English creatively and to have their own Englishes (Jenkins, 2007;Mauranen, 2012;Seidlhofer, 2011;Widdowson, 2003). While English belongs to all those who use it, the phenomenon that non-native English Speakers are making English their own and are changing English should be respected instead of being criticized. Second, NNESs are open to all communicative resources available to them and communicative resources go beyond native English forms (Seidlhofer, 2011). It follows that NNESs’ linguistic repertoire includes native-like English, non-native-like English, ELF users’ first languages, and other forms that enable ELF communication. Third, effective communication is not guaranteed by conforming to established norms; rather, it is realized through flexible use of English according to the Situation where English is used (Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Mauranen, 2012). Fourth, successful intercultural communication reveals the use of some intercultural communicative strategies, such as repetition, clarification, accommodation, intercultural awareness and so on, although these strategies do not make ELF users’ English native-like (Baker, 2015;Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Jenkins, 2000, 2007). Fifth, intelligibility is an attitudinal thing. That is, attitudes play an important role in evaluating the intelligibility of forms of English that do not conform to native English norms (Jenkins, 2006, 2007, 2009). In short, the growing knowledge about ELF challenges the presumed link between nativeness of English and effectiveness of international communication.

3 Background

China has long received the legacy of English as a foreign language since the early contact with English. Bolton’s work (2003) provides an insight into the development of English education in China, which can be traced back as early as the 17th Century when English Speakers inclding businessmen, missionaries and colonizers came mainly from Britain and America to China. With an attempt to “convert the Chinese, “ missionaries built up schools and Colleges and started English education. From within China, the Chinese government and people started to realize the importance of English in acquiring advanced knowledge and new technology (Bolton, 2003, p. 230). Such a historical context, which steered the Chinese desire for formal English education (Bolton, 2003), ushered monolingual native English-oriented English education in China, with native English-speaking missionaries as major providers of English education. In contemporary time, whereas English was foreign to most of the Chinese, a number of Chinese Speakers who were regarded as language elites of society had encounters with the English language in their jobs (Pride & Liu, 1998). Yet, the English-speaking interlocutors they encountered were mostly NESs. Put differently, over a long time in the history of English in China, the context where Chinese Speakers were situated featured the use of English by a small number of Chinese Speakers to communicate mainly with NESs.

Since the start of the 21st Century, English has become a widely used language accessible to many users from China and contributed to the language resources owned by Chinese users of English. Code-switching frequently occurs among Chinese Speakers. Chinese Speakers use English for intercultural purposes oriented towards people from all over the world, among whom a growing number of users of English come from other countries than native English speaking countries. That is, the context where Chinese Speakers and learners of English are situated features the increasing use of English as the chosen medium of communication between Chinese and other first language Speakers, such as holiday makers and Conference delegates from Japan, France, Middle East, just to name a few. As suggested by Gao and her team’s study (2012), the boundary between “users” and “learners” is getting blurred given the increasing engagement with English in China.

The changing context of English illuminating the changing role and function of English for Chinese Speakers, however, urges us to reflect on native English, which, as Wen (2012) observes, is still exclusively favored in formal education. In this respect, Xu (2002) suggests the need for a shift from teaching EFL to teaching ELF. At a more conceptual level, ELF researchers (e. g., Jenkins, 2014;Seidlhofer, 2011) challenge the notion that native English, which is used in monolingual native English contexts, is the golden rule for intercultural communication, which often takes place in multilingual contexts. Clearly, what makes certain use of English appropriate depends on the very contexts where the language is used, whereas it becomes problematic to adhere to the norms of English that are generated in America, Britain or other native-English-speaking contexts. Nonetheless, the scholarly work on and insight into ELF (e. g., papers published in the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca) have “very limited and weak” impacts on English education in China (Wen, 2012, p. 372). These clearly suggest a gap between English in sociolinguistic reality and English in classrooms. Following many applied linguists (e. g., McKay, 2002;Seidlhofer, 2011;Widdowson, 2003), who emphasize the usefulness of the learned subject for real life, this paper proceeds to consider ways of making language dassroom more ELF-relevant in China.

4 Methodology

The data underpinning this paper were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The questionnaires were administrated in a university and a number of workplaces in China, such as foreign trade companies, international marketing departments in Chinese enterprises, international liaison offices of some China-based organizations and institutions, and Chinese-foreign joint ventures. In this paper, participants from student background are identified as S and those from professional background are identified with P. After screening, 769 questionnaires were accepted for data analysis (Wang, 2012, 2013).

The interview participants were recruited on the basis of screening questionnaires (Wang, 2012, 2013), including 12 English major students and 12 non-English major students from a Chinese university. The English majors included both undergraduate and graduate students. Non-English majors were all graduate students, for whom English was necessary for the purpose of academic study. Another 11 participants were recruited among Chinese Professionals whose job duties included communication with foreigners when the fieldwork was conducted, although some of them reported to use English more frequently than others. The interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, depending on how much information the participants would like to contribute.

As Kvale (1996) points out, researchers use interviews to conduct the in-depth exploration of the issues that make sense to the subjects and to understand the themes by drawing upon the contexts of conversations. Efforts were made to keep the interview conversations natural and easy for the participants and, simultaneously, make the conversations informative for the interviewer. For example, probes rather than questions were prepared; conversations followed the participants’ fiow; and Mandarin Chinese was adopted for the interviews, although some participants switched freely between Chinese and English at times during the interviews. The data presented in this paper are translated from the original Chinese version.

5 The data

6 Discussion

Intelligibility has been an issue constantly debated in terms of the acceptability of variations from Standard English (e. g., Bamgbose, 1998;Jenkins, 2000;Li, 2009;Smith & Rafiqzad, 1979). As Bamgbose (1998, p. 10) notes, traditional concern for intelligibility is often associated with “a one-way process in which non-native Speakers are striving to make themselves understood by native Speakers whose prerogative it was to decide what is intelligible and what is not. “ While the concept of intelligibility is complex and subject to the discussion by many linguists (e. g., Jenkins, 2000;Smith & Rafiqzad, 1979), which is beyond the scope of this paper, the one-way defined intelligibility is problematic with a few issues being neglected. First, the focus on one-way process motivates the question why NNESs are supposed to take the full responsibility of making the communication successful while their NES interlocutors are free from the responsibility but act as the judges of the NNES counterparts’ Englishes. This brings home the issue of linguistic equity between NNESs and NESs. As Seidlhofer (2003) argues, NESs should learn to use ELF in order to cope with intercultural communication in that ELF is different from English used in NES communities. Lippi-Green (1994, p. 187) also argues that “communicative burden” should be shared by both parties in the communication in order to make it successful. Second, the one-way process seems to treat the hearer of the message sent by the Speaker as a passive receiver who, however, would possibly interact with the hearer and use some strategies to engage the communication. As a body of research shows, ELF users interact with each other, negotiate and co-construct meaning (Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Jenkins, 2000;Mauranen, 2012). Third, considering intelligibility on the basis of NES-NNES communication overlooks the cases of NNES-NNES communication. A frequently asked question (Jenkins, 2000) seems to be relevant: why NNES interlocutors need to worry whether their Englishes are intelligible for an ideal NES hearer who is absent in the on-site communication between NNESs? In one way, the answer points to NNESs’ linguistic rights, which become even salient in the sociolinguistic reality that NNESs greatly outnumber NESs. In another way, the focus on the imaginary NES hearer regardless of who is actually the hearer on the communicative site points to the negligence of the context.

With the development into the research on NNESs’ use of English, predominantly by the researchers in the fields of World Englishes and ELF, the discussion of intelligibility is seen in literature to challenge the adherence to native English for the sake of intelligibility. Jenkins (2000), for instance, has proposed the concept of Lingua Franca Core, which highlights a few pronunciation features that influence mutual intelligibility among NNESs and excludes some typical native English pronunciation features which cause no intelligibility problems. She further argues that intelligibility is largely an attitudinal matter (Jenkins, 2000, 2007). This is echoed in Seidlhofer’s work (2011). As Seidlhofer (2011, p. 35) puts it, “numerous studies in anthropology, sociolinguistics, and social psychology conducted since the mid-20th Century have demonstrated how attitudes influence perception and can lead to a different ‘reading’ of linguistic forms used, depending on who the speakers/writers are thought to be. “ That is to say, attitudes towards users of certain forms can influence the evaluation of the forms in terms of their intelligibility. It is therefore implausible that intelligibility is exclusively tied up with native English.

Necessarily, acknowledging the impacts of attitudes on intelligibility does not imply that any forms are intelligible. The crucial point, however, is that intelligibility can be achieved through different ways. As Jenkins (2000, 2006, 2007) claims, accommodation strategies are needed to promote intelligibility. In this respect, empirical data has provided evidence to the successful utilization of different strategies in Communications via ELF as opposed to EFL by NNESs (e. g., Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Kaur, 2009). Those strategies indude, for instance, repetition, code-switching, intercultural awareness and signaling misunderstanding (e. g., Baker, 2011;Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Mauranen, 2006). In this sense, intelligibility does not link to the conformity to native English but lies in the adaptation to different communicative contexts and variable communicative purposes (Seidlhofer, 2011).

The current study implies that the participants had an overarching concern for intelligibility of English and that their perceptions of intelligibility moved away from the traditional covet for native English to challenge the assumption that non-standard Englishes threaten intelligibility. It also becomes clear in the data that ELF experience has impacts on the participants’ views of intelligibility in relation to linguistic creativity. As many researchers State, experience plays an important role in attitudinal development (e. g., Byrnes & Kiger, 1997;Garrett, 2010;Jay & Willis, 1992;Wang, 2015). This point converges with Garrett’s (2010, p. 22) claim that “attitudes are learned. “ According to Garrett (2010), personal experience is an important source of attitudes and observational experience also helps to shape language attitudes. The processes of “learning of attitudes” involve “noticing the behavior of other people and the consequences of that behavior” (Garrett, 2010, p. 22). That is, the observation of other people’s experience provides opportunities to develop certain perceptions related to that behavior. In the current study, intercultural experience is seen to have effects on the participants’ perceptions of English. While intelligibility appeared to be a major concern that fed into the participants’ acceptance or rejection of certain linguistic forms, intercultural experience was drawn on to give evidence as to whether certain forms of English worked at all in real life situations. Those who had little ELF experience for reference were likely to emphasize the assumption that conformity to native English is crucial in order to achieve intelligibility. By contrast, those who had or observed successful experience of using ELF were suspicious about the assumption and were even confident of the communicative effects of Englishes that were different from native English. In this sense, linguistic experience in intercultural communication helps to demythologize the exclusive link between nativeness and intelligibility.

The study thus sheds light on the understanding of English for Chinese Speakers in the future. The on-going globalization has promoted and will continue to promote the “interconnectedness” (Cogo & Dewey, 2012) between China and other countries, with English playing a role of global lingua franca in developing the interconnectedness. China has thus witnessed the increasing engagement of Chinese Speakers in intercultural encounters and the growing use of English by Chinese Speakers in multilingual contexts at home and abroad. To put it differently, Chinese Speakers and learners will have more ELF experience or observe more ELF interactions. This will help Chinese Speakers and learners to develop the understanding of what makes intelligibility in using English and fester positive attitudes towards Englishes, which go beyond native English. It is therefore possible that Chinese Speakers will develop greater confidence in their own English and claim their ownership of English in the future.

This study also offers some implications for applied linguistics. An issue of concern emerges as to what can be done in language classrooms. As this study reveals, key to this question lies in the increase of ELF experience. In this respect, ELF corpus research provides rieh data of ELF (e. g., Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Seidlhofer, 2001;Mauranen, 2012), which can serve as classroom resources for students to observe the use of English in intercultural encounters. Importantly, however, teachers should be aware that although ELF corpora demonstrate how English is used in ELF communication and enable us to understand the fluidity of ELF, corpus descriptions are not intended to be used for the purpose of prescribing a new set of English norms (e. g., Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Jenkins, 2007; c. f. Saraceni, 2008). That is to say, teachers need to guide students in attending to how English is creatively and flexibly used to achieve various purposes but avoid making students focus on what particular forms are generated in ELF encounters. It is also useful to have teachers from different L1 backgrounds who do not share L1 with the students so that the teacher-student interaction can resemble ELF interaction. Students can benefit from teachers’ deliberate use of certain intercultural communication strategies as mentioned earlier. Clearly, teachers can encourage students to communicate with people from different L1 backgrounds so as to increase their ELF encounters. In this way, formal instruction can be assisted by activities out of classrooms.

7 Conclusion

This study adds evidence to the impacts of linguistic experience on language attitudes (e. g., Kalocsai, 2009). The participants made sense of the role of English for intercultural communication with or without ELF experience as a source of learning. Those who made no reference to real life ELF experience in their narratives appeared to be firm with conformity to native English and judged variations from native English to be “erroneous” with reference to native English norms. Those who drew on ELF experience made sense of how variations worked and emphasized the communicative effectiveness of variations. While the study allows for the understanding of how ELF experience impacts beliefs about intelligibility of English, it is yet to be explored the correlation between ELF experience and ELF attitudes. This might suggest the direction for future research.

Incontestably, experience is one of many factors that exert influences on attitudes (e. g., Byrnes & Kiger, 1997;Garrett, 2010). The focus of this paper on the participants’ narratives of experience does not deny that the influence of experience might be reinforced or reduced by other factors, which might have certain impacts on language attitudes as well. While, as this study reveals, experience helps to resolve the issue of intelligibility in relation to native English, clearly there are many other issues associated with Chinese English Speakers’ attitudes towards native English and other Englishes, for example, the belief in “pure” English, a notion closely associated with native English, and the aspiration for symbolic power in native English (Wang, 2012, 2013). The current criticism of the exclusive reference to native English aligns with the questioning of the authority of NESs in English (Wang, 2016) or, in Widdowson’s (2003) words, the NES ownership of English. It is in line with the reconceptualization of English in intercultural communication (Cogo & Dewey, 2012;Seidlhofer, 2011), adding to the voices for NNESs’ linguistic rights and for the evaluation of NNESs’ use of English in their own terms (e. g., Ammon, 2000;Jenkins, 2007;Wang, 2013).

While it can be useful for teachers to foster students’ awareness of ELF in formal education by introducing the research on ELF and facilitating the evaluation of the relevance of native English for Chinese speakers’ own needs and wants through their use of English (Wang, 2015), increasing students’ encounters with ELF use will serve this purpose. We are aware that a major challenge for many ELT practitioners to talk about ELF in language classrooms is that native English is the English that enjoys symbolic power and attracts Chinese speakers’ interest to conform to it (Wang. 2013). While it is certainly a personal choice whether to fit in the status quo regarding norms of English, it is necessary to let students understand the criticism of the exclusive focus on native English. With the expanding and deepening intercultural communication in ELF between Chinese and non Chinese speakers in different spheres of China, the irrelevance of conformity to native English for Chinese speakers and learners will become increasingly self-evident. And with the increasing experience of ELF use by Chinese speakers, it is fair to be optimistic that Chinese speakers will claim their ownership of English in the near future.