Desafios e implicações de uma caracterização ecológica para o construto Inteligibilidade da fala em língua estrangeira: reflexões preliminares

Abstract

In the Foreign Language teaching and research scenario, the term ‘speech intelligibility’ is generally brought into discussion. As ‘intelligibility’ is generally defined as the degree of understanding of a speaker’s intended message in the L2, there are many experimental approaches aiming to quantify it. Despite these attempts, we consider that this construct still lacks a clear language background to sustain it epistemologically. In this paper, we discuss the implications and challenges of conceiving L2 speech intelligibility from an ecological perspective. Departing from studies grounded on an ecological approach to speech perception (GIBSON, 1966, 1979; FOWLER, 1986; BEST, 1995; BEST; TYLER, 2007; PEROZZO, 2017a, 2017b), we argue that an ecological characterization of intelligibility surpasses the domain of phonic perception ( ALVES; SILVA, 2016), and that intelligibility is multimodal. The environment in which the interaction takes place is also assumed to play a fundamental role. Intelligibility, therefore, is an emergent property of the interaction, and is characterized as a complex, adaptive process (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 1997, 2017; LARSENFREEMAN; CAMERON, 2008; BECKNER et al., 2009; DE BOT; LOWIE; VERSPOOR, 2007, 2011). These characteristics imply new conceptual and methodological challenges, considering the ecological perspective guiding the construct