Dialect Research Articles

Language Training and Language Training Practices in The Call Center Industry

Language training practices, in terms of management of training communication, are common to all call centers. Call center policies, requirements as well as activities are implemented and regularly observed. This descriptive research, which used qualitative analysis, investigated the language training practices employed by language trainers in developing the language skills of call center agents and the call center agents’ perception of the effectiveness of language training provided by the call center. Data were drawn from interviews with language trainers and call center agents. Results revealed that language trainers had the same practices in their respective companies during the language training in terms of language training assessment, monitoring, and coaching. However, in terms of components or key areas in the criteria used for the training processes, and the manner of implementation of the activities or intervention conducted varies from one call center to another. Accent neutralization was taught and practiced to eliminate regional accents while using scripted language is for formats and call branding for first- timers. The findings of this study also showed that language training provided by call centers was perceived differently by call center agents. Call center agents found the training good enough for the job, while others did not. Findings of the study also revealed that the training was more focused on products and less on language aspects. Agents believed that not all knowledge and skills learned were applied in the actual job. Call centers may consider focusing the training on language, specifically on areas/aspects that agents found to have a deficiency.

Regional accents modulate perspective in geographical space

In this study, participants listened to first-person statements that mentioned a character who was approaching a geographical location close to (Tenerife, Canary Islands) or distant from the participant (Madrid, Spanish peninsula), pronounced with either the participants' local or a distal regional accent. Participants more often judged approaching statements as coherent when they refer to a close place pronounced with local accent or refer to a distant place with distal accent, rather than when they refer to a close place with distal accent or to a distant place with local accent. These results strongly suggest that the local accent induces listeners to keep their own geographical perspective, whereas the distal accent determines shifting to another’s perspective. In sum, a subtle paralinguistic cue, the speaker’s regional accent, modulates the participants’ geographic perspective when they listen to identical first-person sentences with approaching deictic verbs.

From koine to standard: the early modern origin of a key linguistic term

Abstract In this paper, I explore the early history of the word standard as a linguistic term, arguing that it came to compete with the designation common language in the seventeenth century. The latter phrase was, in turn, formed by ideas on the Greek koine during the Renaissance and appears to have been the first widely used collocation referring to a standard language-like entity. In order to sketch this evolution, I first discuss premodern ideas on the koine. Then, I attempt to outline how the intuitive comparison of the koine with vernacular norms that were being increasingly regulated resulted in the development of the concept of common language, termed lingua communis in Latin (a calque of Greek hē koinḕ diálektos), in the sixteenth century. This phrase highlighted the communicative functionality of the vernaculars, which were being codified in grammars and dictionaries. Scholars contrasted these common languages with regional dialects, which had a limited reach in terms of communication. This distinction received a social and evaluative connotation during the seventeenth century, which created a need for terminological alternatives; an increasingly popular option competing with common language was standard, which was variously combined with language and tongue by English authors from about 1650 onwards, especially in Protestant circles, where the vernaculars tended to play a more prominent role than in Catholic areas. Of major importance for this evolution was the work and linguistic usage of the poet John Dryden (1631–1700). This essay uncovers the early history of standard as a key linguistic term, while also presenting a case study which shows the impact of the rediscovery of the Greek heritage on language studies in Western Europe, especially through the term common language.

Perception of indexical cues in speech by children and adults with and without dyslexia: Regional dialect and gender identification.

Auditory research in developmental dyslexia proposes that deficient auditory processing of speech underlies difficulties with reading and spelling. Focusing predominantly on phonological processing, studies have not yet addressed the role of the speaker-related (indexical) properties of speech that enable the formation of phonological representations. Here, we assess auditory processing of indexical characteristics cueing a speaker's regional dialect and gender to determine whether dyslexia constraints recognition of dialect features and voice gender. Adults and children aged 11-14 years with dyslexia and their age-matched controls responded to 360 unique sentences extracted from spontaneous conversations of 40 speakers. In addition to the original unprocessed speech, there were two focused filtered conditions (using lowpass filtering at 400 Hz and 8-channel noise vocoding) probing listeners' responses to segmental and prosodic cues. Compared with controls, both groups with dyslexia were significantly limited in their abilities to recognize dialect features from either set of cues. The results for gender suggest that their comparatively worse gender recognition in the noise-vocoded condition was possibly related to poor temporal resolution. We propose that the deficient processing of indexical cues by individuals with dyslexia originates in peripheral auditory processes, of which impaired processing of relevant temporal cues in amplitude envelope is a likely candidate.

5–9-year-olds categorisation of regional accents: The role of exposure to variation

This study investigates primary school children’s ability to categorise speakers based on regional accent variables found in the UK. Thirty-three children (5;7–9;9) in York took part in a task in which they were asked to group speakers according to whether they sounded as though they came from the same place. Results showed that children were much more accurate at grouping together different speakers according to a Yorkshire/Standard Southern British English accent distinction, rather than a Yorkshire/Scottish or a Yorkshire/North East accent distinction. The distinctiveness and the familiarity of the Standard Southern British English accent features can account for this finding. Furthermore, the children’s general exposure to variation was found to predict their accuracy in the task; children with more exposure to regional variation performed better when grouping speakers based on their pronunciation of the same phoneme embedded within the same word. Building on the results of a previous study with preschool children, these results are discussed in line with an exemplar model of indexical learning.

Perceptual assimilation of regionally accented Mandarin lexical tones by native Beijing Mandarin listeners

Pronunciations of Beijing Mandarin are those of Standard Mandarin (hereafter Mandarin), which developed from the Beijing dialect. Native speakers of other regional dialects in China learn Mandarin as an early second language, and produce its four lexical tones (level, rising, dipping, and falling) with regional accents. This study investigated how native Beijing Mandarin listeners perceptually assimilate regionally accented Mandarin lexical tones. Native Beijing Mandarin listeners (Mage = 21.31 years) were recruited to identify 16 Mandarin real words (4 consonant-vowel syllables: ba, di, du, gu × 4 tones) produced by speakers of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou dialects and to rate how similar the productions were to the Beijing accent. Stimuli were blocked by syllable, maintaining minimal contrasts between the tones. The Beijing listeners identified Mandarin words in all three accents with high accuracy (>90%), indicating that they reliably assimilated the regionally accented tones into the four Mandarin tones. However, their reaction times were longer and their rating scores were lower for the regional accents than for the Beijing stimuli. This indicates that while Mandarin listeners are sensitive to accent differences in Mandarin lexical tones, they show phonological constancy across regional accents, which is crucial for tone categorization and discrimination of tone contrasts.

The influence of sociophonetic knowledge on lexical encoding across dialects

The goal of this study was to determine if the strength of lexical encoding differed between regional dialects as a function of the explicit social knowledge listeners held about the dialects or talkers. Participants heard lexical items produced in the Midland, Northern, and Southern dialects of American English in an explicit lexical recognition memory task. Some participants were told the regional backgrounds of the talkers while others were not. It was predicted that encoding would be most robust for tokens produced in the ideologically standard Midland dialect and would be more robust for the socially stereotyped Southern dialect compared with the non-stereotyped Northern dialect. Being told regional information about the talkers was predicted to increase the robustness of encoding. Analysis of response times provided some evidence of a standard dialect benefit across listeners from the three regions, though this effect varied depending on the vowel contained in the stimulus item. Interestingly, being given regional information about the talkers did not increase the robustness with which tokens were encoded; for some listeners, it hindered performance. These results indicate that social knowledge about linguistic varieties can be highly integrated with speech processing, but that it is not facilitative in all situations.

Lifespan “Changes from Above” in the Standardization of Japanese Regional Dialects: Levels of Grammar, Lexical Properties and Community Characteristics

AbstractThis paper examines sociolinguistic properties of lifespan changes in language use from a non-Western perspective. Based on real-time studies in a change from above context (standardization) and panel surveys of prosody, the paper demonstrates that the stability of individuals’ language use over time varies along the following interwoven factors: (1) levels of grammar; (2) lexical properties; (3) progressive stages of a community in transition; and (4) locally constructed social identities. While segmental phonology and morphosyntax remain intact, lexical accents and vocabulary items tend to change in close linkage to sociolinguistic properties of individual words. Such changes are also motivated by the coexistence of an incoming standard, revitalized traditional dialect, and newly emerging “diaglossic” in-between variants in a community that is shifting to bidialectalism. Lifespan changes could also be community-specific, varying even within a single dialect region between two communities across which the stages of standardization and members’ locally constructed social identities differ.

Structure, Chronology, and Local Social Meaning of a Supra-Local Vowel Shift: Emergence of the Low-Back-Merger Shift in New England

AbstractThe Low-Back-Merger Shift (LBMS) is a major North American vowel chain shift spreading across many disparate dialect regions. In this field-based study, we examine the speech of fifty-nine White Western Massachusetts speakers, aged 18–89. Using diagnostics in Becker (2019) and Boberg (2019b), we find the LBMS emerging at the expense of the Northern Cities Shift (Labov, Yaeger, & Steiner, 1972) and traditional New England features (Boberg, 2001; Kurath, 1939; Nagy & Roberts, 2004). In Becker's LBMS model (2019:9), the low-back merger (lot-thought) triggers front-vowel shifts. Our results suggest that local social meaning can sometimes override this chronology such that the front-vowel shifts occur before the low-back merger, even as the overall configuration comes to match Becker's predictions. Sociosymbolic meaning associated with the older New England system has led to a different temporal ordering of LBMS components, thus providing new theoretical and empirical insights into the mechanisms by which supralocal patterns are adopted.

Phonetic convergence in temporal organization during shadowed speech

The goal of this study was to examine phonetic convergence in various measures of temporal organization during shadowed speech across different American English dialects. Participants from the Northern and Midland American English dialect regions, as well as “Mobile” participants who had lived in multiple region, read 72 sentences to establish a baseline for temporal organization, and then repeated the same 72 sentences after Northern, Midland, and Southern model talkers. Measures of temporal organization (i.e., %V, ΔC, ΔV, rPVI-C, and nPVI-V) were calculated for the read sentences, shadowed sentences, and model talker sentences. Statistical analysis of the differences in distance between the model talker sentences and the shadowers’ read and shadowed sentences, respectively, revealed significant convergence by all three shadowing groups toward the model dialects for ΔV, and significant divergence by Mobile talkers away from the model talkers for nPVI-V. Though the result of divergence by Mobile talkers was unexpected, both results provide evidence that support previous studies, which claim that social perception is a large contributing factor in convergence and divergence. These results are also consistent with previous findings demonstrating variation across dialects in temporal organization and in addition, provide evidence for variation across dialects in convergence in temporal organization.

Talking American in the Midwest: Linguistic Diversity and Authenticity in the Twentieth-Century United States

During the early twentieth century – when the United States was receiving an influx of non-English-speaking immigrants, and “standardization” was a dominant, yet polarizing, concept – having a single national language that unified Americans became a controversial topic in public discourse. In The Odyssey of a Nice Girl, Ruth Suckow, like many authors at the time, used immigrant language as a foil for midwestern speech to demonstrate its “standard” Americanness. But, as this essay will show, by using other regional American dialects in a similar manner, she questioned how “Americanness” was being understood and recognized during this period in the United States.

Dialect contact in real interactions and in an agent-based model

This study investigates if and to what extent speakers change their vowel production after interacting with someone from a different dialect region. Phonetic accommodation was investigated for 14 mixed-dialect pairs in Swiss German. Vowels for each speaker pair were analysed acoustically before and after they interacted for about 20 minutes. Agent-based modelling was used to simulate the change in absence of social and interactional factors. The simulation predicted that convergence was not symmetric but depended on a vowel's variability and its orientation in the acoustic space prior to the interaction. No evidence of convergence was found for the accommodation study involving 14 real interactions. The lack of convergence is explained with reference to the specific sociolinguistic situation of German-speaking Switzerland, where dialects carry a high prestige and are mutually intelligible, and where mixed-dialect interactions are the norm.

Jenda Munthe's Personal Branding Power on Instagram Content #Tanyajawabjenda for Content Creator Career Development

This study describes how the concept of personal branding content creator Jenda Munthe is constructed through the #tanyajawabJenda content on his Instagram account. The results of this study will provide an understanding of the construction of personal branding in Instagram social media content, through case studies conducted on efforts to establish personal branding content creator Jenda Munthe. From the results of the analysis conducted using eight personal branding concepts from Montoya & Vendehey (2002) in this study, proves that Jenda Munthe has succeeded in building his personal branding well, fulfilling the eight concepts. Of the eight concepts, Jenda Munthe's personal branding is most strongly supported by the concept of The law of specialization, The law of unity, The law of persistence and The law of goodwill. These four concepts make Jenda Munthe's personal branding through the content of #tanyajawabJenda, known as an angry content creator with a regional Batak accent, easily accepted by Instagram social media users. Jenda Munthe's personal branding through his Instagram content has finally opened up new career opportunities for Jenda Munthe as a content creator who previously worked as a Criminology Journalist. The phenomenon that occurred in Jenda Munthe provides a reality finding that to become a content creator, a personal branding concept is needed through content on a media, such as Instagram social media. This research uses qualitative research methods, with the type of case study research and qualitative descriptive research type.

THE PARADIGM OF LEARNING TAHSIN AL-QUR’AN FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

This research is a literature study, which aims to determine the importance of learning to read the Qur’an tahsin starting at anearly age or for elementary school students. The purpose of learning to read the Qur’an is to improve how to read the Qur’an,which focuses on makhorijul letters and the science of tajwid. Tahsin learning is an obligation for every generation of Muslimsin this case, especially students, to improve, perfect the reading of the Qur’an in accordance with the rules of tajwid science,starting with the makhorijul hurf approach, learning it through a teacher by dealing directly, such as which has been exemplifiedby the Prophet Muhammad. From the results of interviews with tahsin teachers, there are several obstacles in learning Al-Qur’antahsin in elementary schools, (1) Some students have a thick regional language accent so that they have difficulty in practicingmaterial, especially makhorijul letters in learning tahsin. (2) Some students are less serious when practicing imitating makhorijulletters from the teacher. (3) Tahsin Al-Qur’an is a way of learning to read the Qur’an or improve the reading of the Qur’an,which uses Arabic, using hijaiyyah letters which are rarely found in everyday life.

The Southwestern Mandarin /n/-/l/ Merger: Effects on Production in Standard Mandarin and English

Southwestern Mandarin is one of the most important modern Chinese dialects, with over 270 million speakers. One of its most noticeable phonological features is an inconsistent distinction between the pronunciation of (n) and (l), a feature shared with Cantonese. However, while /n/-/l/ in Cantonese has been studied extensively, especially in its effect upon English pronunciation, the /l/-/n/ distinction has not been widely studied for Southwestern Mandarin speakers. Many speakers of Southwestern Mandarin learn Standard Mandarin as a second language when they begin formal schooling, and English as a third language later. Their lack of /l/-/n/ distinction is largely a marker of regional accent. In English, however, the lack of a distinction risks loss of intelligibility because of the high functional load of /l/-/n/. This study is a phonetic investigation of initial and medial (n) and (l) production in English and Standard Mandarin by speakers of Southwestern Mandarin. Our goal is to identify how Southwestern Mandarin speakers produce (n) and (l) in their additional languages, thus providing evidence for variations within Southwestern Mandarin and identifying likely difficulties for L2 learning. Twenty-five Southwestern Mandarin speakers recorded English words with word initial (n) and (l), medial <ll> or <nn> spellings (e.g., swallow, winner), and word-medial (nl) combinations (e.g., only) and (ln) combinations (e.g., walnut). They also read Standard Mandarin monosyllabic words with initial (l) and (n), and Standard Mandarin disyllabic words with (l) or (n). Of the 25 subjects, 18 showed difficulties producing (n) and (l) consistently where required, while seven (all part of the same regional variety) showed no such difficulty. The results indicate that SWM speakers had more difficulty with initial nasal sounds in Standard Mandarin, which was similar to their performance in producing Standard Mandarin monosyllabic words. For English, production of (l) was significantly less accurate than (n), and (l) production in English was significantly worse than in Standard Mandarin. When both sounds occurred next to each other, there was a tendency toward producing only one sound, suggesting that the speakers assimilated production toward one phonological target. The results suggest that L1 influence may differ for the L2 and L3.

Development of German Island Dialects in Russia (The Case Study of Dialects of the Russian Germans in Kirov Region, Russia)

The relevance of this work lies in the fact that the specificity of the formation and development of German island dialects in Russia, in particular in the Kirov region, is associated with the problem of studying linguistic stability in a complex imbalanced linguistic situation and interference. The aim of this work is to identify the development features of German island dialects in a foreign language environment. The following methods have been used to achieve this goal: field methods in collecting linguistic material; method of sociolinguistic questioning and interviewing of respondents; statistical and comparative analysis when correlating the studied dialect systems with other German dialect systems, with the Russian language and Russian regional dialects. It should be noted that the German island dialects of the Kirov region have peculiar linguistic features, including new vocabulary units, as well as involving the language of the surrounding majority.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARDS THE USE OF JOOX APPLICATION TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ PRONUNCIATION

Student in Indonesia has many regional accents. It influences them when they are pronouncing English words. Most of them thought that pronunciation is quite-hard. However, with the use of application media could help students in the learning process. One of the applications that can be used as a medium to improve the student pronunciation is JOOX. In this paper, the researcher will investigate student’s perception towards the use of JOOX Application to improve their pronunciation. Furthermore, the researcher uses descriptive qualitative as a method of the study. The participants of the study are 20 students of English Education batch 17 at Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia. Data were collected through questionnaire and interview. After collecting the data, the researcher analyzes the data by tabulating data. The result revealed that most of the students (74%) are agreed that JOOX application help them to get better pronunciation with the help of lyrics features in JOOX application.

Adapting Technology to Meet 21st -Century Language Learning Difficulties

The use of technology tools in education is one of the modern educational methods that have proven themselves in a short period and have become an important reference for the parties to the educational process. This study aims to study the importance of adapting technology to meet 21st -century language learning difficulties. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, English has gradually replaced regional dialects in schools. The English language today occupied a prominent place among the languages of the whole world, and it has become the language of science and technology and the language most learned and used as a second or foreign language (FL). In the other hand, many previous studies showed that students face difficulties when learning the English language. Although these English learning difficulties in the classrooms, several researchers indicated that utilizing technologies in language learning processes is a useful instrument that could improve students’ performance. The results indicated that technologies are considered as a vital part in the recent learning process, and it could enhance learners motivations and develop their spelling, vocabulary and sentence structure skills. This study results also showed that the main difficulties that could face English teachers especially when adapting technologies in the teaching process are, technical difficulties, poor management abilities of teachers and Bad technological learning infrastructure. The study recommended preparing a technology assisted environment to cover 21st English learning abilities.

How customer service representatives lose control of the call

The contact centre industry has been growing rapidly in the Philippines over the last two decades and now boasts over one million customer service representatives (CSRs). Outsourcing work to this destination, where English may not be the first language, can lead to communication difficulties. Problems of locally recruited CSRs ‘losing control of the call’, leading to customer frustration and poor feedback, have previously been attributed to poor grammar and incomprehensible accents. However, more recent research has suggested that such communicative problems actually stem from a more general inability to build relationships and appropriately select, explain and describe information about the product or service and, if needed, instruct the client on what to do. This paper therefore examines ‘losing control of a call’ in terms of the overall exchange. Specifically, two calls were examined to analyse how information was organised, packaged and developed to the satisfaction (or not) of the client. We argue that discrete grammatical inaccuracies and regional accents do not result in losing control as much as the way overall meaning is managed by the CSR. The implications of these initial findings could be of importance to the recruitment, training, coaching and appraisal of CSRs in an industry where the nature of communication breakdown remains poorly understood.

Matrilineal diversity and population history of Norwegians.

While well known for its Viking past, Norway's population history and the influences that have shaped its genetic diversity are less well understood. This is particularly true with respect to its demography, migration patterns, and dialectal regions, despite there being curated historical records for the past several centuries. In this study, we undertook an analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity within the country to elaborate this history from a matrilineal genetic perspective. We aggregated 1174 partial modern Norwegian mtDNA sequences from the published literature and subjected them to detailed statistical and phylogenetic analysis by dialectal regions and localities. We further contextualized the matrilineal ancestry of modern Norwegians with data from Mesolithic, Iron Age, and historic period populations. Modern Norwegian mtDNAs fell into eight West Eurasian (N, HV, JT, I, U, K, X, W), five East Eurasian (A, F, G, N11, Z), and one African (L2) haplogroups. Pairwise analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) estimates for all Norwegians indicated they were differentiated from each other at 1.68% (p < 0.001). Norwegians within the same dialectal region also showed genetic similarities to each other, although differences between subpopulations within dialectal regions were also observed. In addition, certain mtDNA lineages in modern Norwegians were also found among prehistoric and historic period populations, suggesting some level of genetic continuity over hundreds to many thousands of years. This analysis of mtDNA diversity provides a detailed picture of the genetic variation within Norway in light of its topography, settlement history, and historical migrations over the past several centuries.