Investigating the influence of listener attitudes and expectations on the intelligibility of Hindi-influenced English

Abstract

Phoneme recognition and speech intelligibility can be affected by purely social factors, such as beliefs about or attitudes toward speakers of varying races and ethnicities (e.g., Babel & Russell, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 137 [2015]). The current study examined whether implicit and explicit attitudes about people from South Asian (SA) affect the intelligibility of Hindi-influenced English (HIE). Three measures were used: an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure general associative attitudes toward SA individuals; an intelligibility task in which listeners repeated HIE and North American English (NAE) sentences in noise, accompanied by pictures of SA or white individuals; and an ethnographic interview to acquire qualitative data about stereotypes, communicative practices with nonnative speakers, and other language attitudes. Data collection is ongoing in a more ethnically diverse location (Vancouver, BC) and a more homogenous one (Minneapolis, MN). Drawing from past studies on socioindexical influences on nonnative speech, we predict that individuals who harbor negative attitudes and stereotypes about SA people will perceive HIE as less intelligible than those without such beliefs. The results of this study will inform the growing body of literature regarding the ways in which socioindexical factors influence speech recognition across individuals with diverse ethnicities and language varieties.