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Anyone working in the field of English as a Lingua Franca (henceforth ELF) has to face sooner rather than later a serious cont radiction: that despite the widespread acceptance of th e extensive role of English as an international lingua franca and its increasing number of functions in this respect, there is still an almost equally widespread resistance to this lingua franca’s forms. Given the well-established sociolinguistic fact that languages are shaped by their users, and that nowadays “native speakers are in a minority for [English] language use” (Brumfit 2001, 116), it would make sense for English language teaching to move away from its almost exclusive focus on native varieties of English. This suggestion always meets, however, with strong resistance from many quarters, and this is particularly so in the case of accent. The result is that two particular native speaker English accents, Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA), continue to command special status around the English-speaking world including international/lingua franca communication contexts where sociolinguistic common sense indicates that they are inappropriate and irrelevant.
In the case of RP, the continued promotion of native speaker (NS) English accents has become even more untenable over the past few decades, during which the use of this already minority British accent, hasdeclined even further, especially among younger British people. As Trudgill points out: This raises the interesting question: if RP is so very much a minority accent, why do we spend so much effort teaching it to non-native speakers, especially since, as David Abercrom bie (1956) pointed out, it would makeJennifer Jenkins much more sense on purely phonetic grounds to teach, for example, Scottish pronunciation? (Trudgill 2002, 172) In addition, as Macaulay argues, there are other reasons why RP does not make good sense as the target accent for non-native learners of English: Since RP is not necessarily the easiest or most appropriate accent of British English for foreigners to learn, the choice of RP as a model is difficult to justify. It would be better for everyone if linguists, phoneticians, and teachers overcame their fascination with the accent of an élite minority and concerned themselves more with the speech of the majority of the population. (Macaulay 1988, 115)
Yet the “fascination” with RP continues to this day, and the accent continues to be aspired to even in ELF contexts, where much of the communication does not involve NSs of English at all. Materials for
learners of English especially in Europe, but also in parts of Asia and Latin America, still promote RP as being superior. In fact it is often the only accent presented as a model for production, even if other NS accents and occasionally NNS accents may be presented for receptive training purposes. And because of this, and because of the spurious links still often made in the English language teaching literature between RP, original/authentic English, and the ownership of English, it seems that RP has a place that it does not merit in the psyche of English speakers, both native and non-native, regardless of whether they have an RP accent themselves, or even wish to have one.
The situation is further exacerbated by sociolinguists, who might be expected to treat non-native English accents with the same objectivity and respect that they treat non-standard native English accents, but do not necessarily do so. For example, in a slightly later article on English accents than that quoted above, Trudg ill argues forcefully for RP and against ELF accents, justifying his position as follows:
...it seems to me that even if native speakers do not ‘own’ English, there is an important sense in which it stems from them, especially historically, and resides in them. (Trudgill 2005, 87) And because many NNS learners and teachers of English link British English with RP, this is exactly the sort of claim that convinces them that RP is somehow superior and non-native English accents inferior. Indeed, this argument, that NS English is ‘real’, ‘authentic’, and ‘original’ English was mentioned time and again by the participants in myrecent interview ELF Speakers’ Perceptions of Their Accents study (see Jenkins 2007 and below) when they explained why they felt RPshould be their personal goal, even if they were not necessarily happy about this. And the argument in turn convinces many NNSs that NS
English with an RP accent is essentia l even when English is used as an international lingua franca and no NS of English is present in the interaction. For example in an article promoting RP, Scheuer, a Polish phonetician, echoes Trudgill in arguing that:
