Clopper, C. G., Levi, S.V., & Pisoni, D. B. (2006). Perceptual similarity of regional dialects of American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(1), 566–574.
Presentation: Chris
Summary: Angela
Previous studies have focused on studying the effects of gender and voice quality on the identification of talkers’ identity or social group membership. As the effects of regional dialects were relatively less studied, the authors focused on studying the impact of this factor in the present study by examining Americans’ ability in discerning the four well-known American dialects of Northern, Southern, Mid-Atlantic, and General American. Two experiments were carried out. The first was a replication of Clopper (2004). In this experiment, the authors asked 28 subjects to identify which region a talker was from on listening to sentences. The results showed that the subjects’ performances were above chance level. In addition, listeners’ ability to correctly identify the General American dialect was the highest. This indicated that listeners indeed could detect the regional dialect differences. In addition, the fact that the General American dialect was best discerned indicated that the frequency a dialect appeared in daily life also has an effect in subjects’ ability of discrimination as the General American dialect was the dialect used by the media. The second experiment was conducted to see if subjects were able to accurately tell how similar two dialects were from each other in a pair comparison task. Results were compatible to the first experiment and dialectal discrimination was observed. According to multidimensional scaling analyses, subjects were able to tell apart the four dialects by means of geography, that is, north or south, and markedness, that is, marked or unmarked. The results of both experiments therefore suggested that regional dialects are discerned by listeners.
Presentation: Chris
Summary: Angela
Previous studies have focused on studying the effects of gender and voice quality on the identification of talkers’ identity or social group membership. As the effects of regional dialects were relatively less studied, the authors focused on studying the impact of this factor in the present study by examining Americans’ ability in discerning the four well-known American dialects of Northern, Southern, Mid-Atlantic, and General American. Two experiments were carried out. The first was a replication of Clopper (2004). In this experiment, the authors asked 28 subjects to identify which region a talker was from on listening to sentences. The results showed that the subjects’ performances were above chance level. In addition, listeners’ ability to correctly identify the General American dialect was the highest. This indicated that listeners indeed could detect the regional dialect differences. In addition, the fact that the General American dialect was best discerned indicated that the frequency a dialect appeared in daily life also has an effect in subjects’ ability of discrimination as the General American dialect was the dialect used by the media. The second experiment was conducted to see if subjects were able to accurately tell how similar two dialects were from each other in a pair comparison task. Results were compatible to the first experiment and dialectal discrimination was observed. According to multidimensional scaling analyses, subjects were able to tell apart the four dialects by means of geography, that is, north or south, and markedness, that is, marked or unmarked. The results of both experiments therefore suggested that regional dialects are discerned by listeners.
