Audience design in non-native speech

Abstract

Speech has been shown to accommodate the communicative needs of listeners, for example, for increased intelligibility compared to normal speech. Previous research shows that native speakers adapt their speech in the presence of noise (Garnier et al., 2006), and when addressing children (Biersack et al., 2005) or foreigners (Scarborough et al., 2007). However, our knowledge of how non-native speakers modify their speech depending on the interlocutor is limited. The goal of this study is to identify acoustic features of non-native speech, which may be affected by a change in listener characteristics, particularly, in terms of language background. Native speakers of Mandarin from the same dialectal area gave directions in a map task to three confederate participants: another native speaker of Mandarin (a non-native speaker from the same L1 background), a native speaker of English (a native speaker of participants’ L2), and a native speaker of Russian (a non-native speaker from a different L1 background). Acoustic variables associated with audience design in speech, including measures of speech rate, pitch, vowel duration, vowel quality, and vowel space were examined and compared to results of a detailed survey of participants’ language experience and attitudes toward their first and second languages.