There have been ongoing debates over various concepts and labels concerning accent and pronunciation teaching in the context of globalization. Nevertheless, their viability has not received adequate attention. Andrew Sewell's book English Pronunciation Models in a Globalized World: Accent, Acceptability and Hong Kong English addresses the key issues related to these debates. It extensively examines both linguistic and sociolinguistic theories pertaining to the nature of accent and presents pedagogical guidelines for pronunciation teaching based on valid quantitative and qualitative data from Hong Kong. This eight-chapter book provides an insightful resource for those who are involved in global English studies and English teaching.

Chapter 1 introduces the background of accent studies in the globalization era and outlines the focus, aims, approaches, and the general structure of the book. Several accent-related stories are cited as preparation for discussions in the subsequent chapters. The stories illustrate how the concepts of linguists, educators, and individuals have been affected by the upheaval of globalization. According to Sewell, the book adopts a twin-foci strategy: the practical focus on pronunciation teaching and the geographical focus on Hong Kong. The aims of the book are defined as theoretical, practical, and polemical.

Chapter 2 scrutinizes the theories and approaches of global English from the sociolinguistic perspective, laying a theoretical foundation for the book. People's perception of ‘local’ and ‘global’ has been changed by globalization. As for English, the traditional concept of ‘variety’ has become unstable, because there is now a paradox of apparent localness with permeating ‘linguistic and cultural borders’ (pp.15–16). Sewell states that the practice-based approach is a common strand in global English studies. Based on Bloomaert's (Reference Blommaert2010) sociolinguistic theory of globalization, Sewell outlines several notions including scale, indexicality, polycentricity, language and ideology, and commodification as a toolkit for global English studies. Two research paradigms, World English (WE) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) are introduced at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 3 discusses key issues related to accent and pronunciation in the globalized world. It first examines the concepts of accent and pronunciation and makes an attempt to disambiguate them. Accent is viewed as more ‘global’ patterns, and pronunciation is viewed as certain aspects of these patterns (p.43). It then explores the origin of accent from the perspective of the evolutionary and psychological basis of language. The relationship between accent and identity is discussed in detail from the sociolinguistic perspective because Sewell believes there is a strong connection between the development of varieties and accents. Additionally, being convinced that the studies in the second language acquisition field can assist the identification of certain specific accent features and contribute to the formulation of pedagogical guidelines, Sewell examines the linguistic research findings on accent acquisition in L2 contexts.

Chapter 4 focuses on accent and communication with a thorough investigation into studies on intelligibility in global English. It examines debates over the systematicity and emergence nature of language and then critically reviews the definitions and previous research findings on intelligibility. The term, intelligibility, is differentiated from the other three terms: comprehensibility, interpretability, and accentedness. Sewell admits that the corpus-based approach to ‘international intelligibility’ while able to embody actual interaction, also has drawbacks such as difficulty in tracing misunderstandings in communication and separating accent factors from other factors. Jenkins' (Reference Jenkins2000) Lingua Franca Core (LFC) approach is appealing because the distinction of core and non-core features may partly solve the above problems. Sewell integrates the narrow and the broad senses of functional load theory and takes it as a possible explanation for findings of intelligibility studies. Finally, he warns that intelligibility should not be abused, by which he means that in pronunciation teaching and assessment the term should not be applied in a rigid manner.

Chapter 5 deals with pronunciation teaching and pronunciation models. It outlines the historical development of pronunciation teaching and characterises the current pedagogical approaches in the globalization context. It is indicated that the nativeness principle is still currently dominant. In teaching and learning, the model accents are usually misinterpreted as labels represented for qualities such as correctness, authenticity and so on. Proposals made by both WE approaches and EFL approaches are investigated in detail in this part. After reviewing the models debate, Sewell elaborates on the four-quadrant model of accent variation. According to him, the four-dimension framework, with linguistic factors and sociolinguistic factors as the vertical axis and individual perspective and social perspective as the horizontal axis, emphasizes ‘the interdependence of various factors’ (p. 105) and may encourage balanced attention to different factors in language use and pronunciation teaching and evaluation.

Chapter 6 turns to issues of Hong Kong English from the sociolinguistic perspective and serves as a prelude to the discussion of accent-related data in Hong Kong in chapter 7. It first presents an overview of the sociolinguistic profile of English in Hong Kong, pointing out that English has an obvious symbolic function there. To account for Hong Kong people's attitudes and orientations towards English pronunciation, Sewell reviews the ideology of language including people's perception on the standardness, linguistic purity, and falling standards. Luk and Lin's (Reference Luk, Lin and Hughes2006) study identifying ‘accent-based linguistic hierarchization’ in Hong Kong is introduced to manifest how Hong Kong people understand ‘good’ or ‘bad’ English. After reviewing different studies on accent attitudes and variety status, Sewell argues that though there is an identifiable Hong Kong accent, the linguists’ ‘rather dogmatic pursuit of typicality’ has blocked its recognition (p. 130). This chapter ends with the examination on the variety status and the codification attempts in Hong Kong and a further analysis on the strategic essentialism in WE discourse.

In Chapter 7, the accent-related data gathered in Hong Kong are analyzed with the application of the four-quadrant framework. Sewell studies the accent variation in Hong Kong English by analyzing samples taken from English-language television programs. The study suggests that with or without the typical Hong Kong accent features, the speakers on TV would be identified easily as speakers from Hong Kong, and certain accent features tend to co-occur. Experiments are also conducted to measure how accent-related factors affect intra-national intelligibility, and the data show a consistency with the arguments regarding functional load and verify that consonantal modifications are more likely to reduce intelligibility. The studies also display other insightful findings regarding linguistic and sociolinguistic factors affecting the judgment of acceptability. To capture the individual perspective, Sewell has conducted interviews with students from three Hong Kong universities. The data describe the students’ personal perceptions of various concepts and phenomenon related to accent and pronunciation discussed earlier.

Chapter 8 is the conclusion, which draws together the major issues and arguments of the whole book. Sewell critically examines the nature of pronunciation teaching and testing in Hong Kong, and urges there be a more subtle strategy by restating the practicability of intelligibility principle as opposed to the nativeness principle. In this chapter, he outlines the major pedagogical implications and general strategies in pronunciation teaching, which addresses the central question of the book: ‘What does it mean to teach English pronunciation in a globalized world?’

It is worth noticing that, though Sewell asks for a change, he is not radical in his book. He is prudent in dealing with the previous studies and theories as well as making his own conclusions. For example, though he identifies some important defects of WE and EFL approaches to global English studies, he does not totally negate them, and though he upholds the intelligibility-orientation and features-based approach to pronunciation teaching, he warns that they should not be abused or rigidly used.

Sewell's work is theoretically significant and has valuable practical implications. First, he critically reviews the most important linguistic and sociolinguistic theories and studies pertaining to global English, accent, pronunciation and pronunciation teaching. The book may serve as a useful guidebook for graduate students who want to have a comprehensive understanding of accent-related issues in the globalized world. Second, research concerning accent perception, pronunciation teaching and evaluation in Hong Kong introduced in this book may provide inspiration for scholars who plan to conduct their own research on this topic in other regions where English is spoken and learned as a second language. Third, for the practitioners of English education, this book is also worth reading because it may drive them to reflect on the criteria they have adopted in their daily teaching activities.

Overall, English Pronunciation Models in a Globalized World: Accent, acceptability and Hong Kong English is a great contribution to the study of Global English, especially the study of English accent and pronunciation.