THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF SOCIAL DIALECTS FOR WORKING-CLASS ADULT LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

Miriam Eisenstein C.C.N.Y.

Gail Verdi BOSCES

This study investigated the intelligibility of three English dialects for 113 working- class adult English learners in the New York metropolitan area. The relative intelligibility of standard English, New Yorkese, and black English for these students was rated based on comprehension of six tape-recorded contextualized monologues, two in each dialect. Learner proficiency was rated by cloze procedure, and most students were found to be at the intermediate level. Results showed that English comprehension was significantly affected by dialect. Interestingly, black English was the least intelligible of the three dialects considered in spite of the fact that this population had considerable contact with black English speakers. Also, learner judgments of the speakers on the tapes in terms of job status, friendliness, and appearance paralleled the relative comprehensibility of the speech samples.

The attainment of proficiency in English as a second language is now recognized as the achievement of communicative competence by the learner (Hymes 1972).' This means that the speaker must be able to produce and understand English in a variety of settings both in and out of the classroom. English learners in New York City are exposed to speakers of several English dialects, including the regional standard, New York nonstandard English (Labov 1966), and black English (Dillard 1973). In order to function, English learners must gain at least receptive knowledge of these English varieties.

Yet, most research in acquisition of English as a second language currently focuses almost exclusively on a standard form of English and presumes that the standard language is the target for all learners. Although within-dialect variation due to factors such as topic and participants has been considered, the influence of dialect differences in developing linguistic competence has been virtually ignored. More data are needed in this area.

This study investigated the intelligibility of three dialects of English used in the New York metropolitan area for working-class adult English

'The research reported here was funded by Spencer Foundation Grant Lf6-455961.

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learners. The relative intelligibility of New York nonstandard English (New Yorkese), black English, and the regional standard will be considered. Working-class immigrants have contact with speakers of these dialects to varying degrees depending on place of residence, work environment, and social interactions. Due to the importance of comprehensible input in language learning (Krashen 198 l), the extent to which learners can understand speakers of these dialects will be a relevant variable influencing the model of English they choose as a target for learning.

BACKGROUND

The unique and perplexing needs of inner-city ESL students have been underscored by the work of Borodkin et al. (1976), Shaughnessy (1977), and Byrd and Klosek (1979). Byrd (1981) stressed that facts about the language use of these students are lacking and the information is crucial to the development of methodological approaches geared to this population. This study will provide much needed information by focusing on dialect intelligibility, an important factor in the language acquisition of inner-city learners.

Recent work on the concept of intelligibility as it relates to second language acquisition includes a study by Kachru (1976), which considered models of English for the third world and emphasized that the concept of intelligibility is relevant for all levels of language. The intelligibility of Indian English varieties was investigated by Bansal (1969). This study revealed that Indian and R.P. dialects were not equally intelligible, and there was considerable variation among the Indian dialects depending on word stress, sentence stress, rhythm, and intonation. Nelson (1982) attributed some intelligibility problems to the syllable-timed nature of Indian English as compared with American and British standard English, which are stress-timed varieties.

Intelligibility was also investigated by d’Anglejan (1975) and Tucker and Sarofim (1979), who found that the learner’s ability to recognize deviant sentences improves along with proficiency in the target language. To the extent that nonstandard dialects represent deviance from a perceived norm (standard English) this work may be relevant to the current study. Brodkey (1972) found that prior listener experience with the voice of a particular speaker may also be a crucial factor in promoting comprehension.

Eisenstein and Verdi 28Y

Smith and Rafiqzad (1979) studied the intelligiblity of different forms of accented English for a variety of ESL populations around the world. They found the order of difficulty for the varieties tested was similar for populations from different native language backgrounds. Smith and Bisazza (1982) considered the comprehensibility of three English varieties: American, Indian, and Japanese. American English was most comprehensible, followed by Japanese and Indian English. The authors explained the differential comprehension of Indian versus Japanese English on the basis of the listeners’ greater exposure to the latter, since Hawaii has a large Japanese population. Results also showed that respondents’ subjective judgments of relative intelligibility agreed with the objective test results.

In a study of the development of dialect discrimination and sensitivity in ESL learners, Eisenstein (1982) found that the ability to recognize dialect differences occurs early in the English learning process while the ability to identify and categorize specific varieties develops more slowly. Eisenstein’s work agrees with that of Swacker (1977) in noting that advanced English learners make judgments of various dialect speakers which are consistent with native judgments of the same speakers. In open-ended interviews conducted by Eisenstein, English learners characterized tapes of nonstandard speech as unclear and hard to understand. It may be the case that dialect-based variation in intelligibility plays a role in the development of dialect discrimination.

Eisenstein and Berkowitz (198 I ) investigated the role of phonological deviance in the comprehension of New Yorkese and foreign-accented English by beginning and intermediate learners. Significant findings pointed toward greater ease of comprehension of standard English. Both individual sentences and connected discourse gave consistent results, and data for intermediate-level learners were clearer than for beginners. Eisenstein (198 1) considered the intelligibility of black English, New Yorkese, and the regional standard for middle-class adult learners of English. Results showed that for these learners, black English was more difficult to understand than the standard. While New Yorkese was somewhat harder than the standard for learners to comprehend, there appeared to be an interaction effect between sex of speaker and level of intelligibility.

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PROCEDURE

Subjects for the experiment consisted of 113 adult English learners who live and attend classes in working-class neighborhoods of the New York metropolitan area where substantial numbers of black English and New Yorkese speakers live. Learners came from intermediate- and advanced- level ESL classes at three universities catering to urban students. A background questionnaire was administered to the subjects in order to determine socioeconomic background and exposure to English.

To control for the possible variation in proficiency level as characterized by the different universities, a cloze test was administered to the subjects. Cloze procedures have been found to be reliable integrative tests of English proficiency for foreign speakers and have the advantage of taking a relatively short time to administer (Oller 1979). The cloze test used here (see Appendix A) was taken from a passage in Intermediate Comprehension Passages (Byrne 1970) and procedures in Oller (1979) were followed.* Tests were scored by the “acceptable word” method considered more appropriate than the “exact word” method for ESL students (Hinofotis 1980). Baseline data for the cloze were developed by administering it to 62 students at the American Language Institute of New York University.

Six tapes were prepared to provide a male and a female speech sample for each of the three dialects tested. Dialect samples consisted of verbal monologues in which the speakers related unusual or humorous experiences that had ostensibly occurred to them in the recent past. Each monologue was placed into a context for the listeners so that it would be more like a natural language experience. Topics and situations were selected which would be familiar to the learners. Based on an analysis of a pilot test, 6 monologues were selected with 8 comprehension questions each; these were balanced so that all monologues and questions did not differ significantly in level of difficulty when presented to learners in standard English. Monologues were randomly assigned to one of the three dialects and one male and one female speaker was chosen for each dialect, six speakers in all. Four of the monologues were translated into the nonstandard dialects as follows. First, the speaker read the story to himself or herself. The speaker then orally translated the story one sentence at a

2Cloze procedures have been found to be reliable integrative tests of English proficiency for foreign speakers and have the advantage of taking a relatively short time to administer (Oller 19791.

Eisenstein and Verdi 291

time in response to oral cues from the researcher. This translation was then transcribed. After a period of practice, each speaker made corrections and/ or additions, striving to achieve a natural oral linguistic style. Authenticity of the samples was judged by linguistically trained native speakers of each dialect in question.

Learners were told that they were participating in a study to help us understand more about how people learn English. Each class began by listening to a practice story in standard English and responding to a set of multiple choice questions. This first practice was not considered in the data, but was done to familiarize subjects with the procedure and control for a learning effect. The monologues were presented to each class as a whole in one of four different orders. Students heard each monologue only once and were given as much time as needed (up to about five minutes per tape) to answer written multiple choice comprehension questions.

After the comprehension procedure was complete, students were told that they would be asked to share their impressions of what each speaker might be like. It was stressed that these would merely be “guesses”simi1ar to the experience one has while speaking to someone new on the telephone or listening to a voice on the radio. Each tape was then replayed once and the speaker rated on a job scale adapted from Shuy, Baratz, and Wolfram (1969) and on two 7-point semantic differential scales relating to friendliness and appearance.

Finally, a discussion and debriefing session was held for the students in each class. Its dualgurpose was to elicit their responses to the experience and the extent of their contah and familiarity with the dialects presented, as well as to explain more about the experiment to enhance the experience for the learners.

RESULTS

Based on the questionnaire, data on the population are as follows: 47 males, 54 females, 12 no response to this item. Native language was predominantly Spanish with a small number of Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, Portuguese, French, and Creole speakers. Learners had lived in the U.S. an average of 4% years, but there was a large range, spanning from as little as 4 months to 15 years. Social status (based on parents’ or own occupation) showed 17 lower-class, 58 lower-middle-class, and 18 middle-class students, and 8 students from originally upper-class

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backgrounds who were now living in working-class areas. Forty-six learners had studied English before entering an American college for periods ranging from as little as two months to several years. Students reported that they spent an average of 18 hours per week speaking English. Cloze test scores revealed a mean of 26.5 ( S D 10.9) equal to the intermediate level of proficiency at the NYU American Language Institute (ALI).3 However, as the figures above indicate, there was great variability among the data.

Comprehension scores for each tape are listed on Table 1. An analysis of variance for repeated measures was performed using the Data Text computer package with one between-group factor (sex of listener), and two within-group factors (dialect and speaker). The dependent variable was each learner’s intelligibility score on the tapes (Table 2).

An analysis of covariance was performed using the cloze test results as the covariate (Table 3). Results were virtually identical to the original ANOVA with respect to the effects being tested. However, not surprisingly, proficiency as measured by the cloze accounts for a large amount of variability among subjects.

Sex of listener was not found to be significant. Dialect of the speaker was significant at the .001 level. Post hoc Scheffe tests were performed and differences in means for each tape and dialect appear in Tables 4 and 5. It is clear that the comprehension of black English was significantly more difficult for these learners than was New Yorkese or standard English.

The standard English male was the easiest for all listeners to comprehend. The standard-English-speaking female’s tape was more

Table 1 Comprehension scores by speaker and dialect

(number correct of 8)

Speaker Dialect

Standard English Male 5.75 Standard English 5.07 Standard English Female 4.40 New Yorkese Male 4.63 New Yorkese 4.77 New Yorkese Female 4.91 Black English Male 3.06 Black English 3.05 Black English Female 3.04

3Cloze tests scores for ALI students (number correct out of 50) were as follows: Level 3 = 23.1, Level4- 24.8, Level5=26.2and Level8=4I.O(Level3ishighbeginner;Levels4-6are low, middle, and high intermediate, and Level 8 isadvanced.) No data were available for Level 7.

Table 2 Analysis of variance

Source Sum of Squares df Mean Square FTest Significance

Between Subjects

Sex (of listener) 0.01 1 I 0.01 I 0.001 n.s. Subj. within groups 1046.086 98 10.674

Within Subjecfs

Dialect 5 10.618 2 255.309 130.109 <.001 Sex X dialect 3.152 2 1.576 ,803 n.s. Dialect X subject

within groups 384.605 196 I .962

Speaker 93.681 3 3 1.227 14.116 <.OOl Sex X speaker 10.081 3 3.360 1.519 n.s. Speaker X subject

within groups 650.363 294 2.212

Total 2698.596 599 4.505

Table 3 Analysis of covariance aa'justedfor doze scores

Source Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Test Significance

Between Subjects

Sex 0.562 I ,562 ,100 n.s. Covariates 444.536 I 444.536 78.887 <.001 Subjects within groups 512.791 91 5.635

Within Subjects

Dialect 508.958 2 254.479 136.095 <.OOl Sex X dialect 2.980 2 1.490 .I97 n.s. Covariates 0.000 0 Dialect X subject

within groups 344.056 184 1.870

Speaker 95.876 33 3 1.959 14.382 <.OOl Sex X speaker I I .323 3 3.774 1.698 n.s. Speaker X subject

within groups 61 3.324 276 2.222

Table 4 Scheffe test for dialects

Standard New Yorkese Black English

.30 2.02*

1.72*

Standard -

New Yorkese - -

*Difference in means must be 1.528 or greater fo r alpha level < .05.

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Table 5 Scheffe test for speakers

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~~

S.E.M. S.E.F. N.Y.M. N.Y.F. B.E.M. B.E.F.

S.E.M. - I .36* .93 3 4 2.8 1 * 2.67*

S.E.F. - - .44 .53 1.44* 1.31*

N.Y.M. - - - .09 1.88* I .74*

N.Y.F. - - - - 1.97* 1.83*

B.E.M. - - 0.14 - - -

‘Difference in means must be 1.0042 or greater for alpha level < .05.

difficult for learners to comprehend than the two New Yorkese samples. There are at least two plausible explanationsfor this. One possibility is that working-class speakers have sufficient exposure to the New York nonstandard dialect to render it of equal intelligibility to standard English. However, the standard English tape used in this study developed background noise problems which could not be corrected a t the time due to limitations of the testing situation. Perhaps if the background noise were controlled, standard speech would be more intelligible than New York dialect. It appears that New York dialect with no interference is easier for learners to understand than is standard English with interference.

The learners’judgments of the people on the tapes exactly paralleled the relative comprehensibility of the speech samples (see Table 6) . This was true for job status, friendliness, and appearance.

Group discussions held after the testing revealed that many of the learners had developed the concept of dialect differences in English and a sense of the differing status associated with such languae varieties. The two black English speakers elicited comments on the familiarity of black English. Like their middle-class counterparts, the students on the whole recognized its lower status as well as its association with “being cool.”

Table 6 Speaker judgments

Standard English New Yorkese Black English

Male Female Male Female Male Female

Job status 5.23 3.72 3.13 4.89 3.08 2.69

Friendliness 5.67 5.07 4.80 5.34 4.41 4.23

Appearance 5.41 4.94 4.60 5.21 3.84 3.59

Eisenstein and Verdi 29.5

Interestingly, in the course of the discussions it became clear that some students evidenced definite black English patterns in their interlanguage, particularly in lexicon and syntax. None of these students, however, said anything to indicate an awareness of such patterns in their own speech. Learners noticed that black English differed from other forms in vocabulary, “melody,” emphasis, and stress. Learners did not mention grammatical differences. Several commented that one or the other of the black English speakers sounded a little “Southern,” but that this kind of speech was common in the New York area and that they were “used to it.” Slang was also associated with black English as was a lack of education and perceived lack of clarity for the listener. Learners also said that they heard this speech often in school.

The standard English speakers were positively viewed. Comments included an impression of a high educational level and perceived clarity of pronunciation. Several students said this would be a good model of speech to emulate. For some reason, a few students associated this speech variety with Manhattan or Queens, perhaps because they felt residents of these boroughs were more affluent.

In contrast to the other two dialects, there was no consensus among the students about the New Yorkese samples. Some students thought this was not the best way to speak, but many found it quite acceptable. Interestingly, one learner stated that the New Yorkese-speaking female was white, educated, but tired. The New Yorkese male was characterized by another learner as someone with an associate’s degree from college who was probably from Brooklyn. Other comments included an association of this speech form with LLdowntown New York City,” and a perception of high educational achievement. This confusion about the New York City nonstandard dialect among the working-class learners was similar to that found by Eisenstein (1982) in her work with middle-class ESL learners in New York.

DISCUSSION

The surprising result of this study is that working-class learners with considerable exposure to black English seemed to find it much more difficult to understand than standard English or New Yorkese. The learners in our sample were very much like middle-class students tested in an earlier study (Eisenstein and Hopper 1983) in this respect. This was

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particularly unexpected since in the course of administering the experimental task both researchers observed that at least some of the population tested exhibited features of black English in their interlanguage.

Joshua Fishman (personal communication) notes that the phenomenon described above is not unknown. Intelligibility and linguistic perceptions in general may be affected by a variety of psychosocial factors. Nelson (1982) points out that there are both linguistic and nonlinguistic factors which may influence intelligibility. The extent of “tolerable deviation” from one’s own model may vary according to the attitude toward the user. The understanding of the interaction of linguistic, social, and psychological variables resulting in this population’s reactions to black English must await further investigation.

It appears that for the students tested, New Yorkese is not significantly more difficult to understand than standard English. This was not the case in a similar study with middle-class learners (Eisenstein and Hopper, forthcoming). Perhaps the working class learners’ more extensive contact with New Yorkese speakers, fostering more positive associations with this speech, could be responsible.

In judging speaker characteristics, scales of friendliness, appearance, and job status closely parallel relative intelligibility. The extent of these responses is strongest for perceived job status, confirming previous work done by Eisenstein (1979; 1982). It appears that the participants in this sample share native norms toward dialect speakers as do their middle-class counterparts.

IMPLICATIONS

Results of this study show clearly that black English creates intelligibility problems for ESL learners. In the case of the students included in the sample tested here, this may have some serious consequences, since much of the English input available to these learners comes from black English speakers. If these speakers are more difficult to understand than standard English or New Yorkese speakers, and if they are also perceived to be less attractive and friendly, the English learners may be isolated from at least part of the English-speaking community around them.

Further research must address the reasons for the intelligibility differences reported here. It is possible that black English speakers are

Eisenstein and Verdi 297

perceived to be less friendly because they are harder to understand and/ or that both phenomena result from a negative reaction on the part of the learners to black English speakers, a judgment which is unfortunately shared by part of the native U.S. society. Another crucial consideration is the appropriate pedagogical approach to the situation. Teachers need to help the learner become more receptive to black English input and less judgmental of individuals while maintaining an accurate appraisal of how this and other nonstandard dialects are viewed by the larger speech community. This is not an easy task. Finally, the line of research presented here must be replicated in natural contexts in which verbal interaction occurs in person and includes both conversational exchanges and nonverbal signals.

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