Niedzielski, N. (1999). Information on the Perception of Sociolinguistic Variables. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. 18(1), 62–85.
Presentation: Angela
Summary: Shelly
Listeners’ perception on speakers’ dialect has been suggested to be influenced by various factors, such as gender difference, visual input, and also dialectal information of speakers. The present study focused on the influence of dialectal information, and special attention was paid to determine to what extent listeners use speakers’ social dialectal information to construct speakers’ phonological vowel space. Listeners recruited in this study were native speakers of Detroit English, whose dialect has been found to sound like Canadian English because both of them show raising in some vowels, such as in /a/. This kind of raising has been stereotyped as a characteristic of Canadian English, known as Canadian Raising (CR). Another characteristic of Detroit English is that the vowels in this dialect have gone through a process called Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS), which makes Detroiters’ vowels to be very different from those in Standard American English (SAE). According to previous literatures, Detroiters did not recognize their own dialect to be featured with CR or NCCS, and they believed that what they spoke was SAE. In order to see whether such a belief is caused by Detroiters’ deafness to the phonetic features of their own dialect, or whether by the influence of stereotypical dialectal information, the present study conducted the following experiment. Forty-one Detroit residents were recruited as listeners. They listened to sentences carrying target vowels spoken by a female Detroiter, and were asked to match each vowel with one of six re-synthesized vowels. The listeners were divided into two groups, one of which was told that the speaker was a Canadian, and the other was told a Detroiter. Results showed that in the group where listeners believed that they were hearing Canadian English, they were more likely to match the heard vowels with raised vowels or non-standard vowels. Conversely, if listeners thought they were hearing a Detroiter, they tended to match the heard vowels with the vowels similar to SAE. Results of this experiment indicated that listeners’ judgment on the same phonetic vowel will differ when given different dialect information about the speaker. The feature-deafness discussed previously only occurred when they think the heard vowels were from their own dialect, but disappeared when they think they were listening to another dialect. In conclusion, it can be confirmed that speakers’ social information indeed influences listeners’ perception on phonological vowel spaces.
Presentation: Angela
Summary: Shelly
Listeners’ perception on speakers’ dialect has been suggested to be influenced by various factors, such as gender difference, visual input, and also dialectal information of speakers. The present study focused on the influence of dialectal information, and special attention was paid to determine to what extent listeners use speakers’ social dialectal information to construct speakers’ phonological vowel space. Listeners recruited in this study were native speakers of Detroit English, whose dialect has been found to sound like Canadian English because both of them show raising in some vowels, such as in /a/. This kind of raising has been stereotyped as a characteristic of Canadian English, known as Canadian Raising (CR). Another characteristic of Detroit English is that the vowels in this dialect have gone through a process called Northern Cities Chain Shift (NCCS), which makes Detroiters’ vowels to be very different from those in Standard American English (SAE). According to previous literatures, Detroiters did not recognize their own dialect to be featured with CR or NCCS, and they believed that what they spoke was SAE. In order to see whether such a belief is caused by Detroiters’ deafness to the phonetic features of their own dialect, or whether by the influence of stereotypical dialectal information, the present study conducted the following experiment. Forty-one Detroit residents were recruited as listeners. They listened to sentences carrying target vowels spoken by a female Detroiter, and were asked to match each vowel with one of six re-synthesized vowels. The listeners were divided into two groups, one of which was told that the speaker was a Canadian, and the other was told a Detroiter. Results showed that in the group where listeners believed that they were hearing Canadian English, they were more likely to match the heard vowels with raised vowels or non-standard vowels. Conversely, if listeners thought they were hearing a Detroiter, they tended to match the heard vowels with the vowels similar to SAE. Results of this experiment indicated that listeners’ judgment on the same phonetic vowel will differ when given different dialect information about the speaker. The feature-deafness discussed previously only occurred when they think the heard vowels were from their own dialect, but disappeared when they think they were listening to another dialect. In conclusion, it can be confirmed that speakers’ social information indeed influences listeners’ perception on phonological vowel spaces.
