The Impact of Race on Speech Perception and Accentedness Judgements in Racially Diverse and Non-diverse Groups

Abstract

Abstract Standard varieties are often perceived as morally superior compared with nonstandard varieties (Hill 2008). Consequently, these differences lead to ideologies that racialize nonstandard varieties (Rosa 2016), and increase the negative stereotypes towards nonstandard varieties (Giles and Watson 2013). One outlet of such stereotypes can be observed with speech intelligibility and accentedness judgements. This study examines whether seeing a White or a South Asian face impacts listeners’ perception of American, British, and Indian English and to what extent listeners’ social network diversity plays a role in predicting their perception of speech. Results indicated that intelligibility scores decreased and accentedness judgements increased for all varieties when speech was paired with South Asian faces. However, listeners with less racially diverse social networks had the highest accentedness judgements. Understanding how to account for the emergence and behavioral implications of different English varieties is a pressing question, and these results shed light on how English varieties are perceived. The implications will be discussed in light of language teaching, linguistic practices, and language research.