An experimental study of English accent perception
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2016/07/0036/000295Keywords:
sociolinguistics, perception, English accents, social and personal qualitiesAbstract
The study aims at proving the observation that in English oral speech perception, sociolinguistic evaluation prevails over personal one. The total of 10 speech samples by 2 native English speakers with no special phonetic or acting training imitating various English accents were evaluated by 26 native English speakers on a number of scales related to sociolinguistic and personal factors. When listening to the same persons speaking in different English language varieties the respondents ascribed to them very different social qualities, such as social class, education and occupation. The personality properties ascribed, such as character traits and age, are shown to depend on the social factors, associated with the accent.
References
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Shamina, E.A. 2012. On objectivity of subjective evaluation of some national and regional English accents. In L.A. Verbitskaya, N.K. Ivanova (ed.), Homo speaking: XXI century research, 150–155. Ivanovo, Ivanovo State University of Chemical Technology Press. (In Russian).
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Copyright (c) 2016 Elena Shamina (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.