ABSTRACT

Listeners can access information about a speaker such as age, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and their linguistic background upon hearing their speech. However, it is still not clear if listeners use these factors to assess speakers’ speech. Here, an audio-visual (matched-guise) test is used to measure whether listeners’ accentedness judgments can be modulated depending on the type of face that they see. American and Indian English were used as different English varieties and presented with either a White female face or a South Asian female face. Results show that listeners’ accentedness judgments increased for Indian English compared to American English. Importantly, the increase in accentedness judgments was also observed when both American English and Indian English were presented with a South Asian face compared to a White face. These findings suggest that linguistic evaluations are modulated by non-linguistic factors and that speech perception is socially gated.

摘要

听众可以在听到演讲者的演讲后了解有关演讲者的信息，例如年龄、性别认同、社会经济地位和语言背景。然而，目前尚不清楚听众是否使用这些因素来评估演讲者的演讲。这里，使用视听（匹配外观）测试来衡量听众的口音判断是否可以根据他们看到的面孔类型进行调整。美国英语和印度英语被用作不同的英语变体，并呈现出白人女性面孔或南亚女性面孔。结果显示，与美式英语相比，听众对印度英语的口音判断有所增加。重要的是，当美式英语和印度英语中出现南亚面孔而不是白人面孔时，口音判断也会增加。