Matched-guise Experiment Research Articles

A comparison of Heritage vs Homeland Taiwanese Mandarin speaker attitudes towards sajiao

This study investigates the language attitudes and perceptions of Taiwanese Mandarin heritage and homeland listeners towards the use of sajiao, a stylized speech type, in two varieties of Mandarin. A matched guise experiment was conducted via Qualtrics with heritage listeners from the United States (n = 6) and homeland listeners from Taiwan (n = 7). Participants listened to a recording and rated their perceived social constructions of the speakers in terms of their cuteness, pleasantness, femininity, masculinity, and professionalism on a scale from one to seven. In total, participants listened to 130 recordings, 64 target and 66 filler, of 4 different sentences with both sajiao and non-sajiao forms. We find that heritage speakers pattern similarly to homeland speakers, although not to the same extent. This positions heritage speakers in their own category, where they have acquired the social associations with this specialized speech style, but not to the same degree as homeland speakers. This research sheds new light on heritage language socialization and perceptions of language variation, namely regarding two varieties of Mandarin and speech style. Further research is needed to investigate how Beijing Mandarin heritage speakers would perform in this same task.

The Indeterminacy of Social Meaning Linked to ‘Mexico’ and ‘Texas’ Spanish: Examining Monoglossic Language Ideologies among Heritage and L2 Spanish Listeners

This study examines how implied speaker nationality, which serves as a proxy for bilingual/monolingual status, influences social perception and linguistic evaluation. A modified matched-guise experiment was created with the speech of eight bilingual U.S. Spanish speakers from Texas talking about family traditions; the speech stimuli remained the same, but the social information provided about the speakers–whether they were said to be from Mexico (implied monolingual) or from Texas (implied bilingual)–varied. Based on 140 listeners’ responses (77 L2 Spanish listeners, 63 heritage Spanish listeners), quantitative analyses found that overall listeners evaluated ‘Mexico’ voices as more able to teach Spanish than ‘Texas’ voices. However, only heritage listeners perceived ‘Mexico’ voices as being of higher socioeconomic status and of more positive social affect than ‘Texas’ voices. Qualitative comments similarly found that heritage listeners evaluated ‘Mexico’ voices more favorably in speech quality and confidence than ‘Texas’ voices. The implications are twofold: (i) the social information of implied monolingualism/bilingualism influences listeners’ social perceptions of a speaker, reflecting monoglossic language ideologies; and (ii) there exists indeterminacy between language and social meaning that varies based on differences in lived experiences between L2 and heritage Spanish listeners. Extending on previous findings of indeterminacy between linguistic variants and meaning, the current study shows this also applies to (implied) language varieties, demonstrating the role of language ideologies in mediating social perception.

An experimental study on how accents affect public perceptions of the police

Abstract Public perceptions of the police have profound impact on public–police relations and the effectiveness of policing practices. Previous research on public perceptions of the police has focussed on citizens’ socio-demographic profile (e.g. age, race) and police officers’ visual characteristics (e.g. attire), but scant attention has been paid to the impact of accent. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of accent on perceptions of the police. In a matched-guise experiment, 160 participants rated officers on their police professional and aesthetic traits after listening to their speeches performed in standard Chinese versus Chinese with a regional accent. The results showed that police officers were rated higher on all the traits when they spoke standard Chinese than accented Chinese, and gender may play a moderating role. The present study revealed that accent can be powerful in affecting the public image of the police.

Speech style variation in an endangered language

Abstract Baba Malay encodes a coarse-refined contrast in speech styles, with the vowel [ɛ] being traditionally restricted to the use of refined word forms. Coarse forms ending with [al], [aɾ], and [as] contrast with refined forms that end with [ɛ], which are used when the speaker wants to be perceived as being particularly refined. A comparison of natural conversational speech with careful performative speech supports the claim that speakers of endangered languages are not “monostylistic”. Production data from eight speakers across different age groups show that the [ɛ] forms more commonly occur in the careful performative speech of younger speakers, as compared to when they converse more informally. No such trend is established for older speakers. The production data is considered together with the findings of a previously-executed matched-guise experiment, which shows that younger speakers in particular are reanalyzing the refined forms as being emblematic of community identity. In this study, younger speakers appear to be using [ɛ] to index an ideal speaker of Baba Malay in their careful performative speech. The research highlights that speakers of endangered languages, and even members of the younger generation, do have access to multiple styles.

Dutch listeners’ responses to Dutch, British and American English accents in three contexts.

The aim of this study was to assess Dutch listeners’ responses to native-accented Englishes compared with Dutch-accented English in terms of speech understandability and speech evaluations in three professional communication contexts. In a matched-guise experiment Dutch listeners (N=392) responded to a Dutch English, a standard British and American accent in terms of speech understandability (intelligibility, comprehensibility, interpretability) and speaker evaluations (status, affect, dynamism). Dutch listeners evaluated these accents in three communication contexts: Lecture, Audio Tour, Job Pitch. Only context affected speech understandability: comprehensibility and interpretability were higher for the Lecture compared to the Audio Tour and the Job Pitch. Accent only negatively affected status evaluations for Dutch-accented English. Context only evoked more affect in the Audio Tour and the Lecture than in the Job Pitch. Our main conclusion is that Dutch-accented English negatively impacts status, but not understanding, affect and dynamism. Context impacts understanding and affect.

The social meaning of a merger: The evaluation of an Andalusian Spanish consonant merger (ceceo)

AbstractThis study analyzes the social evaluations of the Andalusian Spanish ceceo merger and its split, distinción. A matched-guise experiment was created by digitally manipulating spontaneous speech from twelve Western Andalusian speakers, varying only in syllable-initial [s̪] and [θ] for <s> and <z,ci,ce>, creating ceceo and distinción guises. Based on 221 listeners from Huelva and Lepe, Spain, mixed effects linear regression models found that speakers with distinción guises were evaluated as being of higher social status, more urban, and more formal than speakers with ceceo guises. Additionally, listeners' comments referred not only to the sounds and graphemes, but also to the merger itself and its social connotations. The implications are two-fold: (i) consonant mergers may be subject to more overt social evaluation than vocalic mergers; and (ii) a merger can acquire social meaning, and this meaning in turn, may promote its split. (Mergers, splits, sociolinguistic perception, language attitudes, Andalusian Spanish, sociophonetics, dialect levelling, ceceo, distinción)*

Albanians in Greece and the social meaning of ethnolectal features in L2 Greek

Albanian migrants in Greece constitute the largest ethnic minority in the country, amounting to roughly 5% of the total population. The reception of these Albanian migrants has not been smooth and rather has been marked by “extreme xenophobic and racist discourse” (Archakis 2020:5) towards the members of the ethnic community. This discourse is also evident online where it often takes the form of internet memes which target Albanians and their L2 Greek (Ndoci 2021, forthcoming a). In this paper I investigate the social perception of the features of this Albanian L2 Greek through a matched guise experiment. My findings show that individuals who produce Albanian L2 features in their Greek are negatively stigmatized, either overtly or covertly, similarly to the way in which Albanian migrants have been stigmatized in the Greek context. This stigmatization seems to be exhibited both by members of the ethnic group itself and by members of the host community (i.e. Greeks). Moreover, the two groups appear to have differential awareness of the systems of ethnic, regional, and accented Greek that is the product of their experience with the varieties.

“That’s not Proper English!”

From a structural perspective, some English accents (be they native or foreign) carry higher status than others, which in turn may decide whether you get a job or not, for example. So how do language teachers approach this enigma, and how does this approach differ depending on the cultural context you are operating in? These are some of the questions addressed in this article. The study is based on a matched-guise experiment conducted in Sweden and the Seychelles, a small island nation outside the east coast of Africa, where respondents (active teachers and teacher trainees) were asked to evaluate the same oral presentations on various criteria such as grammar, pronunciation, structure etc. Half of the respondents listened to a version that was presented in Received Pronunciation (RP), while the other half evaluated the same monologue presented by the same person, but in an Indian English (IE) accent. Note, that careful attention was paid to aspects such as pacing, pauses etc. using ‘Karaoke technique”. Our results indicate that the responses from the two respondent groups differ significantly, with the Seychelles group being far more negative towards IE than the Swedish group. We try to explain these results in the light of subsequent debriefing discussions with the respondent groups, and we also reflect over the benefits and drawbacks of this type of exercise for raising sociolinguistic awareness among teacher trainees and active teachers. The study is part of a larger project (funded by the Wallenberg foundation) that approaches the challenge of increasing sociolinguistic awareness regarding language and stereotyping, and highlighting cross-cultural aspects of this phenomenon.

Intra-regional differences in the social perception of allophonic variation: The evaluation of [tʃ] and [ʃ] in Huelva and Lepe (Western Andalucía)

AbstractThis study examines the social perceptions of the traditional Andalusian feature [ʃ] and the Castilian feature [tʃ] in the city of Huelva and the town of Lepe in Western Andalucía, Spain. A matched-guise experiment was created by digitally manipulating spontaneous speech from twelve Western Andalusian speakers, varying only in word-medial syllable-initial [tʃ] and [ʃ] for <ch> in disyllabic words. Based on 221 listeners from Huelva and Lepe, mixed effects linear regression models indicate that listeners evaluated speakers with [tʃ] guises as being of higher status, more cosmopolitan, and less friendly than speakers with [ʃ] guises. These findings interacted with speaker and listener gender, listener educational level, and listener origin. The implications are twofold: the traditional Andalusian feature is evaluated as less overtly prestigious than the supra-local Castilian feature; and, that two nearby communities of the same dialect variety may share similar language attitudes, but demonstrate nuanced differences in attitudes due to their unique historical and socioeconomic developments.

Where does a 'foreign' accent matter? German, Spanish and Singaporean listeners' reactions to Dutch-accented English, and standard British and American English accents.

How well L2 English is understood and how L2 English speakers perceive one another within varying communication contexts has been studied relatively rarely, even though most speakers of English in the world are L2 speakers. In this matched-guise experiment (N = 1699) the effects of L1 and L2 English accents and communication context were tested on speech understandability (intelligibility, comprehensibility, interpretability) and speaker evaluations (status, affect, dynamism). German (N = 617), Spanish (N = 540), and Singaporean listeners (N = 542) were asked to evaluate three accents (Dutch-accented English, standard British English, standard American English) in three communication contexts (Lecture, Audio Tour, Job Pitch). The main finding is that the Dutch-accented English accent was understood as well as the two L1 English accents. Furthermore, Dutch-accented English evoked equally positive evaluations to the two L1 English accents in German listeners, and more positive evaluations than the two L1 English accents in Spanish and Singaporean listeners. These results suggest that accent training aimed at achieving an L1 English accent may not always be necessary for (Dutch) English language learners, especially when they are expected to mostly interact with other L2 speakers of English. More generally, our results indicate that L2 English speakers’ understanding and their evaluation of L1 and L2 Englishes would not seem to reflect traditional language norms. Instead, they seem to reflect the socio-cultural embedding of a language norm in a Lingua Franca English speech community that does not view accent varieties as a hindrance to successful communication.

Accepting Alien Rule? State-Building Nationalism in Georgia’s Azeri Borderland

How did ethnic Azeris in the Marneuli, Bolnisi and Dmanisi districts, located inside Georgia but bordering Azerbaijan, react to the reorganisation of political space along national lines after the Soviet Union’s dissolution? ‘Beached’ in foreign states bent on nationalising their domains, minorities throughout Eurasia sometimes rejected and sometimes accepted their alien rulers. This essay examines reactions to this predicament among Georgia’s Azeris. Drawing on elite interviews and data from a matched-guise experiment, it concludes that locals have come to accept their host state after its state-building nationalism took an inclusive turn and the distinction between aliens and natives faded.

The role of affinity in attitudes towards the English of native and non-native speakers

Abstract – To examine the issue of how far ELF can be endonormative, we report on a matched-guise test experiment (Lambert et al. 1960) measuring NNES ELF users’ reactions to ostensibly different speakers, some of whom identified as NES, others as NNES ELF users from the outer circle. Two speakers – one NES, the other a highly proficient NNES (Graddol 2010) – made various short recordings in a studio. Each of these was modified using specialist software to make them sound like different people without affecting intelligibility as regards pronunciation. On a Likert scale, respondents rated how happy they would be to speak like the persona in question. The object was to identify patterns in the way that the features of Nativeness, on the one hand, and Affinity on the other, interacted to affect attitudes to different manifestations of English, and whether any affinity effect (our provisional term) can be shown to exist as a possible alternative to the nativeness principle (Jenkins 2007; Seidlhofer 2001, 2011). That is, whether ELF users may use other ELF users that they find attractive as models for language use rather than the idealized NES.

Social and Stylistic Correlates of Vocal Fry in a cappella Performances

To determine the social and stylistic correlates of vocal fry in a cappella performances. A matched-guise experiment was used to measure listener evaluations of fry and non-fry guises. Four singers, two male and two female, sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" with onset vocal fry. These recordings were used to create the two guises: (i) an unmodified recording with onset vocal fry on vowel-initial words and (ii) a recording in which the fry had been removed. In total, 253 participants listened to the recordings and evaluated the singers' social and stylistic attributes along a Likert scale, e.g., how confident, sexy, and sincere each singer sounded. A factor analysis was used to conflate correlated variables, and mixed effects linear regression models (n = 1,012) were fitted to each lone or joint factor to determine whether vocal fry significantly influenced listeners' responses to the singers. Vocal fry significantly altered listener evaluations of the singers' sincerity/commitment, maturity/sophistication, naturalness, and confidence (P < 0.05). Unlike male singers, who were rated as significantly less sincere/committed with vocal fry, female singers were seen as more sincere/committed with vocal fry and younger listeners also found them less natural, suggesting vocal fry is associated with emotional intensity in female voices. Younger listeners perceived singers with fry as less mature/sophisticated, suggesting an association with youth. Finally, listeners with more musical training rated singers with fry as less confident, while less trained listeners did not exhibit this difference. Listeners are highly attuned to vocal fry in music but respond to it differently based upon their age, musical training, and the singer's sex. Vocal fry is evaluated more positively among younger, less musically trained listeners, and it is better received in women's voices, suggesting that the use of fry strategically targets a specific audience, i.e., younger and less trained listeners, who interpret fry as a marker of youth and emotional earnestness. These findings show that a single stylistic feature like vocal fry can be imbued with multiple meanings depending on the singer and audience, and its use can serve to include or exclude particular listener groups.

Cognitive effort in comprehending non-native speech decreases with listening experience

Listeners adapt to non-native accents, as shown by improved accuracy transcribing a speaker's intended utterance during testing (Baese-Berk et al., 2013; Bradlow &amp; Bent, 2008; Sidaras et al., 2009). However, this improvement does not address whether cognitive effort decreases with accent experience, or whether accented speech continues to require effort to compensate for atypical features. The present study addresses this question using pupil dilation, a physiological measure indexing cognitive effort (Sirois &amp; Brisson, 2014). In a matched-guise experiment, 48 participants heard 90 sentences spoken in either a General American Accent (GAA) or a non-native accent (NNA) while an eye tracker measured pupil diameter. An equal number of sentences with words predictable from context (e.g., “Sugar tastes very sweet.”) and without (e.g., “It can’t be brown.”) were included. Participants transcribed (typed) each sentence. Pupil dilation while participants listened to each sentence was measured as the difference between average diameter for 100 ms immediately before and after the sentence played. Dilation decreased significantly more in the NNA than in the GAA condition, indicating that perception of accented speech becomes less effortful with experience. No effects of semantic predictability were observed. The relationship between effort and transcription accuracy will be discussed.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

Language Attitudes among Adolescents in Montreal: Potential Lessons for Language Planning in Québec

Over the last four decades, numerous laws have been implemented with the aim of strengthening the position of French in Québec. Nevertheless, the French language remains threatened – firstly due to the status of English as the global lingua franca, and secondly due to its role as the language of upward mobility in North America at large. Consequently, there are ongoing debates regarding the need for new language planning measures to protect and promote French. Some of the most prominent proposals in the recent past intended to limit access to Québec's English-speaking collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel, typically abbreviated to cégeps. The aim of these proposals was to prevent young francophones and allophones from integrating socially and professionally into the anglophone community. However, it was unclear whether such proposals would have the necessary attitudinal support at the grassroots level to be successful. This article thus presents the findings of a study which made use of a questionnaire and a matched-guise experiment to elicit the language attitudes of 147 francophone, anglophone and allophone adolescents in Montreal. Considering the findings of this study, the article argues that status and acquisition planning measures limiting access to English-speaking cégeps would likely be unsuccessful due to lacking attitudinal support, and that prestige planning measures would be a more feasible means of protecting and promoting the French language in Québec.

Perceptual salience and social categorization of contact features in Asturian Spanish

AbstractThis article investigates the sociolinguistic perception of contact features in Asturian Spanish, a linguistic variety spoken in Northwestern Spain and characterized by the alternation between features from Asturian and Spanish. A matched guise experiment was used to test the participants’ social categorization of the following morphophonological variants: Asturian [u] and [es] vs. Spanish [o] and [as], respectively. The manipulation of the variants had a significant effect on how listeners perceived the social attributes of the speakers. However, while both variables were used to situate speakers in an urban/rural spectrum, only (o) was associated with status. The results of this study show that individual contact variants can index social information and that not all contact features are equally salient. I propose that, in this case, social salience is determined by the cognitive salience of the variables under study and the transparency of the link between linguistic form and social information.

Prescriptivism and French L2 instruction

ABSTRACTStudies in the field of transcultural nursing in the USA and Australia have shown that bilingual nurses who work in their non-dominant language face many communication challenges. The majority of the linguistic problems they encounter are related to their inability to interpret and use language appropriately in different, authentic nursing situations. Expecting similar language barriers with regard to French as a second language for university students registered in a bilingual nursing programme in Western Canada, a language course that focused on expanding students' stylistic repertoire was developed. To inform the design of the course, an experiment was carried out to identify the linguistic resources French L2 nursing students needed to acquire in order to offer linguistically appropriate nursing care to the French-speaking patients they would treat. More specifically, the linguistic attitudes of 42 elderly patients were measured using a matched-guise experiment in an effort to determine the stylistic norm favoured in the context of nursing student–patient interactions. The results shed light on the forms favoured in the community and serve as a basis for a description of the productive communication skills expected in the target situation.

Swedish is beautiful, Danish is ugly? Investigating the link between language attitudes and spoken word recognition

AbstractThis paper investigates the hypothesis that attitudes towards a linguistic variety and intelligibility of that variety are linked. This is done by eliciting language attitudes and word recognition scores in 154 Danish and Swedish schoolchildren and adolescents between 7 and 16 years. Language attitudes towards the neighboring language are elicited by means of a matched-guise experiment while word recognition is tested by auditorily presenting the participants with 50 spoken stimuli in their neighboring language (Danish for Swedish children and vice versa) in a picture-pointing task. Results revealed that while Danish children held more positive attitudes towards Swedish than vice versa and their word recognition scores were generally higher than those of their Swedish peers, the correlation between these two variables is very low, indicating that the two variables are only loosely linked.

The social motivations of reversal: Raisedboughtin New York City English

AbstractThis article presents a variationist analysis of theboughtvowel in New York City English (NYCE) and finds that it has reversed the trajectory of change outlined in Labov (1966). An acoustic analysis of production data from sixty-four native residents of the Lower East Side demonstrates thatboughtis lowering in apparent time, a change led by young people, white and Jewish speakers, and the middle classes. A second source of data comes from perceptions of raisedboughtgathered from a matched guise experiment, which highlights an indexical field (Eckert 2008) of social meanings for raisedboughtthat comprise a ‘classic New Yorker’ persona: an older, white ethnic New Yorker from the outer boroughs who is mean and aloof. Taken together, the data suggest thatbought's reversal is motivated by its contemporary social meanings. (bought,New York City English, dialectology, variationism, sound change, social meaning, perception, sociophonetics)*