The document discusses research on attitudes towards non-native accents of English. It describes how identity and attitudes can influence the perception of phonetic variation in non-native accents. Three experiments were conducted that rated different English accents on traits like intelligence and friendliness. The results showed that non-native listeners did not strongly identify with accents from their own language background. Variation in consonants influenced ratings of traits like intelligence. To sound intelligent, speakers should aim to match the expected phonetic norms for English.
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Accent variation and attitudes
1. How to sound intelligent? Accent variation and attitudes towards non-native speakers of English Bettina Beinhoff Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL)
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22. Thank you! Presentation available on SlideShare Bettina Beinhoff Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL) University of Cambridge
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Notas do Editor
The reasons for our interest in studying attitudes towards NNS accents are quite obvious. Attitudes are indicators of social identity and reveal group memberships, they are also crucial in constructing stereotypes and therefore have a possible influence on behaviour.
Only few studies exist which deal with NNS of a language and their results are somewhat contradictory.
Ingroup and outgroup accents of English are rated on traits representing the solidarity dimension and the status dimension. In this way we hope to find out what types of accents the listeners identify with and what types of accents are considered to be most prestigious. The traits are rated on a 7-point scale.
Just to clarify the design: We have 3 groups of listeners: native speakers of Greek, native speakers of German and native speakers of Southern British English. German and Greek NNS of English rate ingroup and outgroup accents of English on traits representing the solidarity dimension and the status dimension. These listeners are all graduate students at the University of Cambridge. In a questionnaire, the participants stated that they generally use English more with other NNS than with NS of English and are generally familiar with Lingua Franca-communication. These 3 listener groups rate all 6 accents, which are a Greek accent of English with a stronger L1 influence, a Greek accent of English with a weaker L1 influence, a German accent of English with a stronger L1 influence, a German accent of English with a weaker L1 influence (both types of accent within one language are spoken by the same person, that means the German accents are spoken by one German speaker and the Greek accents by one Greek speaker), a Southern British English accent (which sounds fairly similar to what is generally called Received Pronunciation or Queen‘s English) and a Scottish accent of English include another well-known NS accent from the British Isles. The stimuli used for the perception task in our study are short sentences. These were selected so as to control for variation within the NNS accents by including certain sounds which were expected to be more prone to variation in the accent with a stronger L1 influence and to be produced more constantly in the accent with less L1 influence. So listeners rate ingroup and outgroup accents of English.
Ratings are from 1 = very friendly, etc to 7 = not friendly, etc. Scale only goes to 5 because the average ratings stopped at 4.5 Southern English accent got highest ratings for “status”-traits: In line with previous studies. Influence of education and environment on the ratings. Scottish accent got fairly high ratings for “solidarity”-traits: In line with previous studies. Similar ratings to most NNS accents on “status”-traits.
No differences in responses between listener groups. No clear identification with own NNS accents nor with NNS accents in general. We furthermore expected that the levels of accentedness in the Greek and German accents could have an effect on the ratings. The results indicate that the level of accentedness is especially significant for the Greek accents. The Greek accent with a weaker influence from the L1 was rated significantly more friendly than the German accents – and more striking – it was rated to sound significantly more educated and intelligent than all the other German and Greek accents in this study. Thus, the Greek accent with less L1 influence was rated significantly higher on the status dimension than the Greek accent with a stronger L1 influence. It seems that the differences in the levels of accentedness were perceived much stronger for the Greek accents than for the German accents. This could be because the overall perceived sound similarity between Greek and English might be greater than the perceived sound similarity between German and English as two Germanic languages (cf. Bradlow, Clopper & Smiljanic 2007). Therefore, it could be assumed that there is just more possibility for perceivable phonetic variation between weak and strong Greek accents of English than between weak and strong German accents of English. Interestingly, these types of differences made the biggest difference for the status traits and to this extent not for the solidarity traits. Thus, the type of variation seems to be related more to a prestigious accent rather than an accent listeners would identify with.
In the first experiment, certain sentences/speech samples were rated significantly lower than others across all traits.
No comments on variation in post-vocalic /l/ and final devoicing. According to literature and public perception of accents we expected more remarks on: German variation of / / and / /
No comments on variation in post-vocalic /l/. According to literature and public perception of accents we expected more remarks on: Greek variation of /h/
... Results are especially significant for the trait ‚intelligent‘, which is why we‘ll focus on this one.
German realisations of /r/, / /, / /, /d /, /l/-[ ], final devoicing in /z/ and final devoicing in /d / which all received significant negative ratings. For the Greek accents, the realisations of / /, /l/-[ ] and variation in final /d / all caused negative ratings whereas the Greek / /, / / and word-final /z/ – which did not vary much from the SBrE versions – prompted positive ratings.
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