The differential contribution of segmental and suprasegmental aspects of a foreign English accent to negative perceptions by native and non-native speakers

Abstract

Foreign accents are often stereotyped as a “broken” form of the language, triggering negative reactions in native listeners—a phenomenon attributed to a general reduction in cognitive fluency. This study aims to determine the relative contributions of segmental and suprasegmental features to the perception of foreign-accented speech. Sentences in English were recorded by native speakers of Russian, Italian, and English (the latter as a control group). The recordings were manipulated to form 3 sets: naturally produced, intonation only (i.e., filtered in Praat with a low-pass Hann filter), and segmental only (i.e., foreign pronunciation was preserved in terms of consonants and vowels, but the intonation resembled that of English). Each utterance was presented to native (n = 26) and non-native English speakers (n = 32) residing in NYC and rated on several dimensions on a 1-5 Likert scale. The results support previous findings, indicating that foreign accents cause speakers to be perceived more negatively even in strongly multicultural environments. We discuss the effects of segmental/suprasegmental information in native and non-native perception and a number of language-specific patterns. This study adds to the body of work on the mechanisms underlying listeners' reactions to foreign-accented speech.