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The paradox of stress in English

Is it vital or unimportant?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2025

Laurie Bauer Open the ORCID record for Laurie Bauer [Opens in a new window]
Laurie Bauer*
Affiliation:
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
*
Email: laurie.bauer@vuw.ac.nz
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Abstract

Despite comments in the ELT literature on the importance of word-stress for comprehensibility in English, there are many places where native speakers of English appear to pay it little attention, showing systematic variation as well as errors. At the very least, there is a paradox here, in that learners are told to get a feature right that native speakers feel free to ignore. More detailed consideration, though, shows that matters are not as simple as this implies. In this paper, several types of stress variation in English are exemplified, and it is also shown that in everyday usage native English speakers are flexible in what they will accept where stress is concerned. This raises questions about the best model for teaching stress in English as a second or foreign language. A simple right/wrong dichotomy is unlikely to reflect native usage.

Keywords

Englishhomonymyprosodic dissonanceword-stress

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Type
Shorter Article
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English Today , First View , pp. 1 - 7
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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