Accents
College Students’ Perception Based on Their Accents
Jenny Son
Hunter College/ City University of New York
Abstract
Whether they are not true, people form judgments and biases based on an accent. In, the past, researchers have suggested that people for perceptions of non-native speakers through stereotyping. Lambert et al. (1960) developed a matched- guise technique to uncover biases to different languages. A similar study was done at Hunter College, to examine whether college students were able to correctly identify between African, African American, and West Indian accents and how that affected their perception. What was predicted was that the African American speaker would be rated more favorable, as well as the gender of the participant would also affect their attitudes of the speaker, and the borough of the participant would affect their guess of the speaker’s ethnicity. Results indicated the African American speaker was more correctly guessed and was rated more favorably compared to the other two speakers. There was no difference in how females and males rated the speakers on both scales. As well as, there was no significant affect of the participant’s borough and their influence of speaker’s ethnic background. But, there was a difference in how participants rated the African American speaker compared to those participants who listened to the West Indian speaker. Keywords: accents, perception, college students, attitudes, gender, ethnicity
College Students’ Perception of Speakers Based on their Accents Characteristics of an individual, social background, and the way a person speaks can reflect ones culture. Whether or not it is true, people pass and form judgments based on one’s accents. Through stereotyping, it has been shown in research about language variations that people categorize individuals. Johnson and Buttny (2009) studied ninety- three college students to see the effects of sounding
Jenny Son
Hunter College/ City University of New York
Abstract
Whether they are not true, people form judgments and biases based on an accent. In, the past, researchers have suggested that people for perceptions of non-native speakers through stereotyping. Lambert et al. (1960) developed a matched- guise technique to uncover biases to different languages. A similar study was done at Hunter College, to examine whether college students were able to correctly identify between African, African American, and West Indian accents and how that affected their perception. What was predicted was that the African American speaker would be rated more favorable, as well as the gender of the participant would also affect their attitudes of the speaker, and the borough of the participant would affect their guess of the speaker’s ethnicity. Results indicated the African American speaker was more correctly guessed and was rated more favorably compared to the other two speakers. There was no difference in how females and males rated the speakers on both scales. As well as, there was no significant affect of the participant’s borough and their influence of speaker’s ethnic background. But, there was a difference in how participants rated the African American speaker compared to those participants who listened to the West Indian speaker. Keywords: accents, perception, college students, attitudes, gender, ethnicity
College Students’ Perception of Speakers Based on their Accents Characteristics of an individual, social background, and the way a person speaks can reflect ones culture. Whether or not it is true, people pass and form judgments based on one’s accents. Through stereotyping, it has been shown in research about language variations that people categorize individuals. Johnson and Buttny (2009) studied ninety- three college students to see the effects of sounding
References: Stefanowitsch, A. (2005). The matched guise technique, Empirical Methods in Linguistics, 1-2 Johnson, F. L., & Buttny, R. (1982) White listeners’ responses to “sounding black” and “sounding white”: The effects of message content on judgments about language. Communication Monographs, 49(1), 33-49 Lambert, W. E., Anisfeld, M., & Yeni-Komshian, G. (1965). Evaluation reactions of Jewish and Arab adolescents to dialect and language variations. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 2(1), 84-90. doi:10.1037/h0022088