Is misplaced emphasis a form of mispronunciation?

I was speaking with someone today and he brought up the TV show "South Park", and he emphasized the "Park" whereas most people (and the show itself, I believe) emphasize the word "South". This got me thinking: is putting the emphasis on the wrong word considered a form of mispronouncing a phrase? I realize that the "correct" way to say a word or phrase is pretty subjective (especially considering dialects), but I guess the question can be limited to consider different emphasis within one dialect.

Consider the word Catholic, for example. If you put the stress on the second syllable (as it is in Catholicism), I think you will find very few people happy with your pronunciation.

So, yes — misplaced emphasis or stress can lead to significant mispronunciation.

On the other hand we have words like controversy, where the stress may come on either the first or the second syllable. An anal few like to argue for one or other pronunciation of that one — but most of us accept them both, and some even say both without particularly noticing.

So, no — not always.

If the question is "does stress crucially affect meaning in English?" then the answer is yes.

In a sentence, putting stress on various words affects the meaning:

• I don't love YOU. (rather, I love someone else)
• I don't LOVE you. (rather, I simply like you)

In each English word, the stress is lexicalized. Some words have syllable-final stress:

around, sustain, degree, parade, withhold

Some words have penultimate stress:

better, fashion, payment, differ

Some have antepenultimate stress:

Macintosh

And so on:

legislature

Many words are crucially distinguished by the stress, such as these noun and verb forms of words:

• You record a song and play it on a record.
• You insert an insert into a book.
• When numbers increase, you see an increase.

Also, more closely related to your example, we normally have different stress patterns in how we pronounce set phrases vs. ad-hoc adjective-noun combinations.

For example, if I say "blackboard", I place primary stress on the first syllable ("black"). This will evoke the image of a slate on the wall that you write on with chalk. But if I am actually talking about a board (say, made of wood) that has been painted black, I would call it a "black board", placing primary stress on "board". Likewise, the word "South Park", as a set phrase, is generally stressed on the first syllable.

Not all common phrases take on this stress pattern, and not every one of these types of phrases have taken on the same status for everyone.

You will find that most speakers will conform to these rules almost all the time, although a word or phrase here and there might be treated differently by a given speaker or dialect region. For example, around here I hear people say the noun permit with stress on the secondary syllable — I only use that stress for the verb form.

So, these are the facts. Whether or not any deviation is considered a mispronunciation is, as you say, subjective.