The role of a foreign accent in the social and personal identification of a speaker

Marianna Popova,O Popova

doi:10.1051/shsconf/202110101013

Abstract

The intensification of migration processes in Europe necessitates studying the foreign accent as a means of social and personal diagnostics within multicultural communities in the light of the increased number of cases of the “accent-based” discrimination, since the foreign accent is perceived negatively by native speakers and causes less confidence in a speaker. Studies carried out in recent decades suggest that external signs are gradually losing their leading role in social identification, giving way to more reliable and objective means – pronunciation characteristics, since they are practically impossible to control. For this reason, an experimental phonetic research was carried out on the material of the German language in order to identify the nature of the influence of accentedness on the social identification of Russian-speaking immigrants from the position of German native speakers, as well as to determine the acceptation limits of accentedness degree of Russian-speaking bilinguals. With regard to the results of the study, it was found that a strong accent negatively affects the overall assessment of an individual in terms of the educational level, income and success of a speaker, while in terms of personal characteristics there is no pronounced negative attitude towards people speaking with a Russian accent, regardless of the degree of accentedness.

Highlights

At present, research in the field of contrastive phonetics within the contrastive linguistics is topical
Since external signs are gradually losing their significance in social diagnostics, speech and, in particular, accent become one of the most important means of social identification
In a communicative environment where a foreign language acts as a lingua franca, and social or ethnic categorization is difficult, “general mechanisms” for assessing accent-colored speech are activated, in which the main factors of assessment are fluency and clarity, along with “general accent stereotypes” [5, 6]

Summary

Introduction

Research in the field of contrastive phonetics within the contrastive linguistics is topical. The significance of research on auditory perception in the study of accent-colored speech cannot be overstated on account of the fact that it is the individual-subjective nature of the identification of a foreign language accent in the process of interpersonal communication that can prevail over the assessment of external characteristics [1, 2]. Regardless of the fact that many multicultural states, in particular Germany, pursue an active “policy of tolerance” towards representatives of various ethnic groups, a strongly pronounced foreign accent contributes, according to the research results, to the activation of “passive tolerance”, which has a detrimental effect on the prospects for the integration of immigrants into the host community and may even cause discrimination [9, 10]. The Russian-speaking community in Germany is the third largest group of immigrants after the ones from Poland and Turkey and numbers, according to various sources, from 2 up to 3.5 million people [11], until now, no studies have been conducted to establish the above relationship on the example of the Russian and German languages

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Conclusion