Deviant pronunciation and its adverse consequences on non-native English speakers' phonological intelligibility: A data- oriented analysis

Abstract

Among the different types of communicative dilemmas from which non-native speakers of English have suffered is that their phonological intelligibility is a problematic phenomenon as a result of being developed in isolation from how lexical items are correctly articulated and how they are perfectly perceived. This study aims to furnish impartial evidence on the one-to-one relationship drawn between deviant pronunciation of lexical items and phonological unintelligibility in a given spoken communication. The norm is that whenever spoken communication is glued together with phonological deviation, the overall intelligibility is affected by inconsistency, distortion, and decline. This study is chiefly based on corpora taken from speech recordings of non-native English speakers who are from different Asian countries and are, in origin, students of the University of Jordan. Data analysis undertakes a quantitative approach of the two-track application: the phonological check-up and statistical investigation of mispronunciation. The results reveal that deviant pronunciation plays a crucial role in spoiling phonological intelligibility, which is hoped to be active and reliable in understanding and interpreting speech and its implicit messages. The average of phonological errors made by the subjects is a critical indicator, giving a lasting impression of threatening and deteriorating phonological intelligibility to nil.