The history of pronunciation in English language teaching is a study in extremes. Some approaches to teaching, such as the "reformed method" and "audiolingualism", elevated pronunciation to a pinnacle of importance, while other approaches, such as the "cognitive movement" and early "communicative language teaching," mostly ignored pronunciation. Furthermore, to a large extent, pronunciation's importance has always been determined by ideology and intuition rather than research. In this article, the author further discusses the two contradictory principles where pronunciation research and pedagogy have been long influenced: (1) the nativeness principle; and (2) the intelligibility principle. (Contains 2 figures.)