FACTORS INFLUENCING INTELLIGIBILITY AND THE OCCURRENCE OF COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWNS IN SPOKEN UTTERANCES: THE ANALYSIS OF THE PILOT STUDY CONDUCTED IN A GROUP OF POLISH USERS OF ENGLISH

The notions of intelligibility and communicative effectiveness have been one of the most frequently researched areas. Typically, those aspects have been considered from the point of view of native speakers of English who analyzed communication problems through their native perception of language. It is claimed, however, that the rules traditionally governing the English language do not apply any more to the present-day linguistic situation. It can be observed worldwide that there has been a shift from the strict adherence to the native-imposed rules of English towards being simply communicatively successful. This situation is undoubtedly connected with the growing interest concerning English as a lingua franca and its more and more frequent international use and popularity (Phillipson 1992; Crystal 2003). The development of English as a global language has triggered enormous interest regarding the use of English in international contexts and the elements responsible for intelligibility or its lack. Therefore, a vast amount of research deals with the problems of comprehensibility of English in international contexts (Derwing & Munro 2005; Jenkins 2000; Deterding 2005, Seidlhofer 2001). Additionally, some researches focused on the aspects connected with pronunciation, such as word stress errors (Benrabah 1997) or intonation variations (Munro & Derwing 1995). Other researches dealt with the issues concerning the extent of comprehensibility and intelligibility in connection with listeners' familiarity with speakers' native languages (Gass & Varonis 1984; Bent & Bradlow 2003), the influence of syntactic forms on intelligibility (Meierkord 2004), or the negative effects of lexical variations ( Nelson 1995, Jenkins 2000, Seidlhoffer 2001). Finally, some researchers investigated listeners’ attitude as one of the factors affecting intelligibility and successful communication (Rubin 1992, Lippi-Green 1997).
Poland is one of those countries where English is considered to be a necessary tool for international communication, without which it is hardly possible to be successful in diverse professional and academic areas. Despite the widespread use of English in Poland, not much research has been performed to investigate the level of intelligibility of Polish users of English and the way they function in international language contexts. The paper presents the results of the pilot study that was conducted in a group of advanced Polish speakers of English. The speakers were digitally recorded while performing communicative speaking tasks in pairs. In the next stage, the recordings were played to a group of listeners (native and non-native speakers of English). The aim of the research is to assess the levels of intelligibility of individual speakers and the factors which are responsible for communication breakdowns. The study concentrates on various aspects that can have a negative impact on the intelligibility and communicativeness of spoken utterances. Consequently, pronunciation, syntactic and lexical variations and deficiencies are analyzed in terms of the extent in which they can cause unintelligibility. The study also tries to indicate whether repair techniques, scaffolding or negotiation of meaning are used in order to overcome communication breakdowns.