Applied English Phonology (review)

Over the past several years, a growing interest among applied linguists in the phonological aspects of second language (L2) learning and teaching has resulted in a rapidly developing body of L2-oriented speech research, along with greater availability of pedagogical materials for L2 classrooms in which pronunciation issues are addressed. Not surprisingly, college and university applied linguistics programs are more likely than ever before to offer courses in applied phonetics and phonology at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Because so few textbooks covering foundational issues in these areas are now available, this new introductory textbook will serve as a useful addition to the current resources.

Yavas identifies his audience as 'students and professionals in the field of phonological remediation' (p. ix), which, for him, encompasses both teaching and therapy. As with other basic texts in phonetics and phonology, the bulk of the book (seven of the nine chapters) is devoted to a description of segmentals, phonemic analysis, syllable structure, and prosody. Although his focus is on English, the author incorporates interesting commentary on other languages that helps the reader gain an appreciation of cross-linguistic phonological diversity. These chapters also devote a commendable level of attention to dialectal variation, including information about English in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean. Overall, the coverage is comprehensive, and the prose is clear and accessible. The diagrams, although crude in some cases, provide quite helpful illustrations. Some course instructors will no doubt object to a few idiosyncrasies, such as the phonemic transcription of English /r/ with a dot under it to indicate retroflexion, and to the occasional doubtful assertion, such as the claim that sour typically exhibits 'raising' in Canadian English. Apart from these minor points, however, there is much here that instructors will appreciate.

In some respects, Yavas's descriptive coverage goes where others have feared to tread. I found chapter 5, for instance, a particularly welcome overview of the acoustic properties of vowels and consonants. It provides a clear account of basic concepts such as spectral representations, formants, and the effects of context on speech production. Presenting students with this kind of information leads them to a deeper understanding of the nature of speech than they could gain from a purely articulatory orientation, and it is not surprising that the author's students have responded favourably to such material in the past. Moreover, chapter 5 should equip students with an adequate background to read at least some of the classic and contemporary research papers on such topics as vowel production and voice onset time.

The material covered in the earlier parts of the book is put into practice in chapter 8, 'Structural Factors in Second Language Phonology,' while chapter 9 examines the relationship between sound and English spelling. The discussion of structural factors, which aims to account for many of the production problems that English learners experience, includes a 20-page section of 'mini contrastive analyses,' in which English is compared with a diverse group of other languages. Though the contrastive analysis approach, which reached its acme perhaps 40 years ago, clearly had value in accounting for some aspects of foreign accentedness, current work from phonetics and phonology has underscored its many serious inadequacies. Consequently, students need to be made aware of more recent theoretical and empirical developments, and of their potential applications. On the one hand, the book makes some attempt to achieve this goal through its citations of such influential researchers as Flege, Major, and Eckman. On the other hand, some quite relevant work is conspicuous by its absence. There is no mention, for instance, of Best's Perceptual Assimilation Model, of Flege's most recent theoretical work, or of perhaps 25 years' worth of studies of the effectiveness of laboratory training and classroom instruction on L2 perception and production. This was disappointing to me because I believe that there are a great many important findings in this burgeoning literature that can and should be made accessible to undergraduate students. Applied English Phonology is...