The Effect of Content and Standardness on Listeners' Affectual Perception of Different English Accents: A Language Attitude Study at McMaster University

Abstract

When people are listening to others they are not just interpreting the speech in order to understand and participate in a communicative act. While interpreting the linguistic information, listeners are attentive to extralinguistic information about the speaker about which they make assumptions based on the accent and content that they hear. Many researchers have studied language attitude to see how different accents compare to each other for different speakers and listeners. Although this research has been done for many different accents, none have been done comparing standard and non-standard accents of Canadian English, or that account for the native accent of the listener. A number of university students from South-Western Ontario were surveyed to elicit general language attitude scores on a series of 11 measures for 8 different voice clips differing in terms of standardness (Standard vs. Non-Standard), content (Academic vs. Colloquial), and accent (British vs. Canadian). A comparison of the mean scores on the accents revealed a general preference for British and standard accents, and a general dislike of Canadian and non-standard accents. A Principal Component Analysis identified a difference in response pattern between native Canadian English and non-native Canadian English speakers. When combined with general qualitative descriptions of the voice clips offered by participants it appears that language attitude is greatly influenced by perception of prestige and familiarity with the accent. Listeners prefer readily identifiable accents that are held in esteem by the greater speech community, while they dislike accents which are less clearly intelligible and lack prestige. Listeners were also more critical of accents with which they were more familiar. Such findings are important because they can help us to identify potential sources of unequal access to opportunity in society as influenced by how people speak.