The Evolution of studies in Phonetics and Phonology and pronunciation teaching in English language

Based on studies in Phonetics and Phonology throughout history, this work intends to raise a discussion about the influence of those studies in English pronunciation teaching. As a starting point, Phonetics and Phonology became distinct disciplines by the Prague Language Circle (1928-1939) and since then they have been given different status and have had diverse relationship in theoretical frameworks, however it is still a question whether those advances have been directed towards teaching (JONES, 2008; GOMES, 2010; EULER, 2014). In parallel, after the publication of The Phonology of English as an International Language (JENKINS, 2000), the status of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) poses new challenges for teaching - intelligibility, focus on production or perception, native or non-native models are issues we have been facing. More recently, Jenkins presented the need for retheorization of ELF regarding its essentially multilingual nature (JENKINS, 2015), adopting the concept of language as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS). In view of the two scenarios, the studies in Phonetics and Phonology in Linguistics, and the studies in ELF and the concept of language as a CAS (LARSEN-FREEMAN, 2015) in Applied Linguistics, the guiding question of this work is: have the evolution of the studies in Phonetics and Phonology and the changes in the status of the English language contributed to changes in the teaching of pronunciation? The discussion will take place from a survey in books aimed at teaching pronunciation.