Language attitudes and ideologies

The Impacts of Race on Speech Perception

PhD Dissertation

As the world becomes more globalized, the necessity to speak more than one language is becoming increasingly urgent. It has been estimated that more than 60% of the world's population is either bilingual or multilingual. One linguistic feature that is generally unavoidable, especially given the multilingual nature of our world, is accentedness. Foreign accented speech is speech that has so-called non-native features associated with it. For instance, if an individual pronounces the word think ([θɪnk]) as [tɪnk], they might be identified as a non-native or an accented speaker. What is crucial about accentedness is that accented speech goes beyond the linguistic features. Previously, it was shown that accented speakers are perceived to be less trustworthy. In our globalized world, the number of accented speakers is continually increasing. If these individuals are stigmatized in their every day life, the issue turns into a public health problem. Here, in my dissertation project, I tackle the factors that can affect listener’s judgments with a partial matched-guise technique in two different countries. Previous research shows that exposure to variable speech increases perceptual flexibility (Bradlow & Bent, 2008). In a bilingual environment, individuals are expected to have more perceptual flexibility, driven from the variability in that bilingual speech context. However, if bilingualism is perceived negatively or associated with foreignness in that context, the perceptual flexibility could be hindered by social cognition. While in the USA, being a bilingual or having an accent can be perceived negatively, being bilingual is the norm in many parts of Canada. I finished collecting data for the USA leg of my study in Spring 2019, and presented the preliminary results at the 12th International Symposium on Bilingualism conference in Edmonton, Alberta. You can find my poster here. Currently, the results from this study is under review. I found that speech paired with South Asian faces was less intelligible compared to the same speech when paired with white faces, regardless of the English variety presented. Currently, I am conducting the same experiment in Dr. Debra Titone’s Language and Multilingualism Lab at McGill University. I aim to show that variability in speech enhances perceptual openness, especially in places where bilingualism is not negatively perceived. I have been visiting Montreal regularly to collect data and to establish a scientific bridge between Florida and Montreal. I am expecting to finish my dissertation in Fall 2020.

​

The graphs below summarize some of the results. You can click on each to learn more about the results. You can access the R code from the button below.