Non-standard Dialects Research Articles

‘Is he a barrister or not?’

Barristers present formalised legal arguments before courts and tribunals. As a result, considerable focus is placed on their oral skills. However, people are frequently judged by the accent they use. Those with a more standard accent – ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RP) in the UK – can be perceived as more intelligent and eloquent. This creates a barrier to social mobility because accent-based bias can discriminate against those with non-standard accents. This article examines how the public perceives barristers in England and Wales with different accents and investigates experiences of barristers to establish whether accent discrimination disadvantages certain speakers. It includes an online survey of the general public which found that RP and South-East English accents are still seen as more prestigious. In addition, interviews with barristers illustrate how accent discrimination is widespread and affects career progression.

The perception and production of Korean stops in second dialect acquisition.

This study investigated the acoustic cue weighting of the Korean stop contrast in the perception and production of speakers who moved from a nonstandard dialect region to the standard dialect region, Seoul. Through comparing these mobile speakers with data from nonmobile speakers in Seoul and their home region, it was found that the speakers shifted their cue weighting in perception and production to some degree, but also retained some subphonemic features of their home dialect in production. The implications of these results for the role of dialect prestige and awareness in second dialect acquisition are discussed.

Verschriftungsprinzipien im geschriebenen Dialekt: WhatsApp-Nachrichten aus Südtirol

Although the orthographic norm of the standard language has dominated most written registers of German, social media and other non-standardized digital contexts have recently given rise to the written use of dialects and vernaculars in informal communication. The written use of non-standard dialects is especially wide-spread in the south of the German-speaking area, e. g. in Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria and South Tyrol, where various studies have reported the use of dialectal forms in digital contexts such as Chatrooms, WhatsApp or Facebook (cf. Christen 2004; Glaznieks/Frey 2018). Using a corpus of South Tyrolean WhatsApp chats with corresponding audio recordings of the chat authors retelling the chat contents, we analyze four phonetic-phonological phenomena of Tyrolean dialects, characteristic of the southern German-speaking area: pre-consonantal s-retraction, the neutralization of the phonemes /p/ and /b/ in word-initial position, vowels undergoing umlaut or unrounding and the realisation of r in the coda of unstressed syllables. In particular, we analyze if and how these phenomena of the dialect are represented in the written form. The results show that Standard German graphematic conventions form the basis for most dialect spellings in WhatsApp chats. However, they are sometimes abandoned for the benefit of spellings that explicitly represent dialectal pronunciations. Interestingly, in some cases these dialectal spellings do not correspond to the pronunciation of the writers who, instead, opt for a pronunciation closer to that of the standard language.

The status of Jejueo: endangered language or disappearing dialect?

ABSTRACT We examine a controversy involving the politics of bilingualism as it pertains to Jejueo (ISO 639–3 jje), the critically endangered variety of speech indigenous to Jeju, Korea’s island province. Although Jejueo is officially classified as a non-standard dialect of Korean, members of the community are now calling for its recognition as a distinct language and for a corresponding change in the country’s language policy. In order to shed new light on this controversy, we adopt an experimental methodology that was initially developed for measuring cross-linguistic intelligibility in three European language families. The results of two experiments establish that the intelligibility of Jejueo to speakers of Korean is remarkably low – roughly at the same level as the intelligibility of Italian to speakers of French. We conclude that Jejueo deserves to be recognised as a distinct language.

Examining language and racial attitudes in an L2 French learning context

ABSTRACT This is a quantitative study on language and racial attitudes among learners of French in the English-dominant context of British Columbia (Canada). Such attitudes matter because they can have an impact on students’ learning outcomes in and outside the classroom and they reflect linguistic and racial ideologies that exist in society. A verbal guise test was used to gather data from 83 participants who were taking intermediate and advanced French courses at the University of British Columbia (UBC) at the time of this study. Five varieties of French (from Montreal, Moncton, Vancouver, Abidjan and Paris) and two races (Asian and White) were included. The objectives were to investigate the effect of accent and race on the participants’ language attitudes. The results revealed a clear preference for European French and Quebec French, but these findings can be challenged by the participants’ difficulty in distinguishing among the different varieties. Interestingly, L2 French was evaluated more positively than the L1 varieties from Moncton and Abidjan – a finding that points to the importance of having exposure to non-standard accents in order to enhance positive attitudes. Finally, the participants also demonstrated a preference for the accents of Asians (compared with Whites) in evaluating spoken French.

Nonstandard dialect pronunciation as an object of sociophonetic research (based on German)

The issue of studying the linguistic variation, caused by the stratification of society into different strata and groups, has not been solved so far, remaining one of the key issues in modern linguistics. This article deals with the concept “nonstandard dialect” in the framework of sociolinguistic research into the German-speaking tradition, which belongs to the field of studies of linguistic variability of the German language native speakers. Nonstandard dialects may differ from other forms of language existence, as well as from the literary language at all linguistic levels: phonological, grammatical, syntactical, lexical and idiomatic. We examine various forms of the vernacular existence, including urban vernaculars. The focus is on the consideration of the features characterizing language variations at phonological and phonetic levels. This is caused by the necessity of determining sources and patterns of linguistic variations at the phonetic level, one of which, in our opinion, may be the nonstandard dialect as one of the forms of language existence. The article touches upon such notions as: colloquial language, regional norms and regional peculiarities of pronunciation. The article presents some pronunciation peculiarities of Cologne inhabitants’ urban colloquial speech at the segmental level of the German language phonetic system.

Beyond assessments: Exploring strategies for Afro-Descendant students’ success in Costa Rica

Purpose: This research aims to critically analyze the potential ramifications of comprehensive assessments on marginalized communities, with a specific focus on Afro-descendant students in the Caribbean/Atlantic region of Costa Rica. It intends to identify the potential effects of these assessments and propose policy and practice adjustments that can enhance their educational outcomes. Research methodology: This research analyzes the recent assessment requirements and the historical background of educational assessments in Costa Rica and explores alternative teaching methods, including culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) and the impact of the dialect and language continuum. Furthermore, the potential benefits of integrating the International Baccalaureate (IB) philosophy into the curriculum of all public schools are also investigated. Results: Based on the analysis conducted, recommendations for policy and practice changes to address the potential impact of assessments on Afro-descendant students include creating a culturally responsive curriculum, recognizing non-standard dialects, using alternative assessment approaches, and emphasizing consideration of marginalized communities' needs and experiences in educational policy and practice decisions. Limitations: This review does not provide an empirical investigation but rather synthesizes existing literature and provides recommendations for future research. Contribution: This research significantly contributes to the existing literature on educational policy and practice in marginalized communities, particularly in relation to students of African descent in Costa Rica and suggests ways to improve their educational outcomes. Its insight can be of interest to policymakers, educators, and future researchers in education and social justice.

Is Your Accent Right for the Job? A Meta-Analysis on Accent Bias in Hiring Decisions.

Standard-accented job candidates are perceived as more hireable than non-standard-accented candidates. Two broad perspectives have emerged as to what drives this effect: (a) that it is a pragmatic response to the perception that non-standard accents can impede job-relevant communication (processing fluency explanation) and/or (b) that non-standard accents signal "otherness" and candidates are devalued as a result (prejudice explanation). This meta-analytic integration of 139 effect sizes (N = 4,576) examined these two perspectives. Standard-accented candidates were considered more hireable than non-standard-accented candidates (d = 0.47)-a bias that was stronger for high communication jobs. Other findings, however, are difficult to explain from a processing fluency explanation: candidates' relative comprehensibility was not a significant moderator of hiring bias. Moreover, the degree of accent bias was associated with perceptions of the candidates' social status, and accent bias was particularly pronounced among female candidates and for candidates who spoke in foreign (as compared with regional) accents.

Human–machine collaboration in transcription

As automatic speech recognition (ASR) has improved, it has become a viable tool for content transcription. Prior to the use of ASR for this task, content transcription was achieved through human effort alone. Despite improvements, ASR performance is as yet imperfect, especially in more challenging conditions (eg multiple speakers, noise, nonstandard accents). Given this, a promising way forward is a human-in-the-loop (HIL) approach. This contribution describes our work with HIL ASR on the transcription task. Traditionally, ASR performance has been measured using word error rate (WER). This measure may not be sufficient to describe the full set of errors that a speech-to-text (STT) pipeline designed for transcription can make, such as those involving capitalisation, punctuation, and inverse text normalisation (ITN). It is therefore the case that improved WER does not always lead to increased productivity, and the inclusion of ASR in HIL may adversely affect productivity if it contains too many errors. Rev.com provides a convenient laboratory to explore these questions. Originally, the company provided transcriptions of audio and video content executed solely by humans (known as Revvers). More recently, ASR was introduced in an HIL workflow where Revvers postedited an ASR first draft. We provide an analysis of the interaction between metrics of ASR accuracy and the productivity of our 72,000+ Revvers transcribing more than 15,000 hours of media every week. To do this, we utilise two measures of transcriptionist productivity: transcriber real time factor (RTF) and words per minute (WPM). Through our work, we hope to focus attention on the human productivity and quality of experience (QoE) aspects of improvements in ASR and related technologies. Given the broad scope of content transcription applications and the still elusive objective of perfect machine performance, keeping the human in the loop in both practice and mind is critical. This paper provides an overview of human and machine transcription and Rev’s marketplace, followed by an analysis of the relationship between ASR accuracy and transcriptionist productivity, and concludes with suggestions for future work.

JAVANESE LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE BY JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN NORTH SEMARANG DISTRICT

The Javanese language has two main dialects. Jogja and Solo Dialects were considered as a standard dialects. Meanwhile, the others, such as Ngapak or East Java Dialects, were considered as non-standard dialects. As the capital city of Central Java, Semarang has a different form from the standard ones and does not resemble the others called Semarangan Javanese Language (SJL). It is interesting to investigate SJL as a Javanese Language variation since it has different vocabularies and accents from the previous dialects but has not reached the standard of being a dialect. This research shows how 40 (forty) students from 4 (four) Junior High Schools, consisting of2 (two) state junior High Schools and 2 (two) two private junior High Schools in North Semarang Districts maintain this language variation by using it at school. The data were collected by observing the students’ activities, both inside and outside the classroom. The result shows that the students are maintaining SJL since they are talking with their friends and others using it as their mother tongue although the school obliged them to use Bahasa Indonesia during school hours and teach the Javanese Language with standard dialect as local content.

When does service employee’s accent matter? Examining the moderating effect of service type, service criticality and accent service congruence

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to further our understanding of the effects of service employees’ accents on service outcomes and to investigate the boundary conditions of service type, service criticality and accent-service congruence.Design/methodology/approachThis study reports on three scenario-based experiments with between-subject designs to assess customer reactions to service employees with nonstandard accents.FindingsThe findings revealed that the three service-related extraneous factors investigated in this study influence the direction and strength of accent’s impact. Service employees’ nonstandard accents generally negatively influence customers’ satisfaction with a service provider and purchase intentions. This effect is stronger for credence services than for experience services. While customer satisfaction with the service encounter tends to stay the same regardless of service criticality, they have less purchase intention in high service criticality situations when they deal with service employee with a nonstandard accent. Accent-service congruence enhances both satisfaction and purchase intention.Research limitations/implicationsThis study makes contributions to the accent in service interaction literature by enabling the authors to have a more complete understanding of how accent effects drive customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Future studies can take customer-related factors such as customer-service employee relationships, customers’ ethnic affiliation and ethnocentrism into consideration when examining the effects of accent in service interactions.Practical implicationsService managers need to be aware when nonstandard accents’ negative effects will elevate – credence service and service with higher criticality are better provided by service employee with a standard accent. A nonstandard accent that matches the service improves customer satisfaction and purchase intention and could be used to its advantage.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the service literature about service employees’ interaction with customers and is particularly relevant in multicultural societies with increasingly diverse workforces.

English Spoken in the Channel Islands

The Channel Islands spoke Norman French up until the 19th century, when English began to take over as the main language of the inhabitants. Today, their local French dialects are dying out, but several features from Norman French are preserved in their English dialect for a while longer. This article examines some of the ways Channel Island English varies from Standard English, and how the dialect has been affected by Norman French by analysing five different features of the dialect: three of them phonological and two of them morphosyntactic. These features have been elected and analysed based on an interview of two native speakers of respectively Jersey English and Guernsey English, produced by BBC in 2015, as well as on findings of previous studies. Though the study, with only two speakers, is not necessarily representative, it does show that the non-standard dialect is present in the Channel Islands.

Attitudes to regional and standard accents in commercial and non-commercial contexts

Commercials regularly use non-standard accented speakers to promote products and services despite sociolinguistic findings that non-standard accents in non-commercial contexts are evaluated less positively than standard accents. Accent evaluations in commercial contexts may be different because of perceived relevance to the product or service or of perceived manipulative intent. To date, no studies have investigated whether identical accented speech fragments are evaluated differently in commercial and non-commercial contexts.The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of non-standard versus standard accented speech in commercial versus non-commercial contexts in terms of attitudes towards the speaker (competence, status, likeability, dynamism), comprehensibility, attitude towards the product, attitude towards the vlog, and perceived realism of the vlog. In a 2 × 2 between-subject design, 631 Dutch respondents evaluated Dutch standard-accented and regionally accented vlogs in either a commercial or non-commercial context. Findings show that commercial versus non-commercial context had no effect on the evaluations of standard and regional accents. In both contexts, a regional accent was evaluated more negatively than a standard accent for the majority of measures: attitudes towards the speaker (competence, status, dynamism), comprehensibility, attitude towards the product, and perceived realism of the vlog. These findings indicate that a regional accent is a potent negative cue across these contexts, overriding possible effects that are specific to commercial contexts.

Od nagrania do korpusu, czyli o metodzie archiwizowania języka mówionego mieszkańców wsi z wykorzystaniem narzędzi lingwistyki cyfrowej

The article presents the method of archiving of the rural speech during the development of the electronic language corpus. Attention is focused on how to get spoken data and transcription of non-standard dialect code. It also presents the problems and limitations resulting from nonnormative spoken data and the solutions applied. The recording and converting of spoken language data for corpus is a complex and multi-phase process. The data is obtained from recorded interviews with respondents. The developed system of spoken data transcription combines the properties of non-standard code, the capabilities of tools and needs of corpus.

Evaluating English Textbook: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

This paper examines an English textbook used in Turkey within the context of sociolinguistic issues. Various studies on book evaluation can be found in the literature; however, there seems to be very limited research analysing the course books from a sociolinguistic perspective. By employing the qualitative research design, the 3rd grade English book Just Fun English (Tiras, 2019) published for public primary schools was analysed using the Sociolinguistic Textbook Evaluation Rubric (Atar & Erdem, 2020). Within the framework of the six criteria of the rubric, the results indicate that the textbook is hardly in conformity with the sociolinguistic matters. Though the textbook considers the linguistic ecology of learners and makes learning English accessible to the public, there are no examples of non-native and non-standard accents of English, non-native-non-native interaction, and successful bilinguals. This study contributes to a growing body of literature by evaluating a textbook concerning the sociolinguistic issues and it offers some insights into the improvement of the textbook.

The Influence of Linguistic Bias Upon Speech-Language Pathologists' Attitudes Toward Clinical Scenarios Involving Nonstandard Dialects of English.

Purpose Variation within languages, including dialects, takes on an indexical function, marking belonging and connection. Meanwhile, attitudes toward these speech varieties become marked by linguistic bias. Within the speech-language pathology profession, research evidence, assessment tools, and intervention programs have largely been designed for and by the White, English-speaking middle class. As such, linguistic bias with a preference for standardized dialects is prevalent in the training and practice of the speech-language pathology profession, resulting in discriminatory and racialized practices. Method To investigate the influence of linguistic bias upon speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') clinical decision making, data were collected from 129 Australian SLPs via an online survey. Inferential statistics were used to investigate the relationship between clinical decision making and SLPs' attitudes toward nonstandard dialects as well as personal and professional factors. A content analysis of extended responses was conducted to identify themes in clinical decision making. Results SLPs with more years of experience and those who had received professional development were significantly more likely to seek out more information before making a diagnosis, while those with more negative attitudes toward linguistic diversity were significantly more likely to identify a disorder than a difference. SLPs provided a range of justifications for their clinical decision making, but few acknowledged the influence of their own attitudes and bias upon their decision making. Conclusions SLPs' linguistic bias towards speakers of nonstandard dialects has the potential to impact upon their clinical judgment of difference versus disorder and lead to inequality of service provision for speakers who do not express themselves in standardized forms. Before the profession can truly move toward an antiracist approach of equitable service provision for all, SLPs must engage in critical self-reflection to disrupt the adherence of the speech-language pathology profession to standardized "White" norms of communication.

“It just sounds proper common”: Exploring the social meanings expressed by nonstandard grammar

It has been suggested that morphosyntax has more constrained social meanings than phonological variation, despite the scarcity of empirical research evidencing this claim. By using frequency correlations to isolate stylized moments of grammatical variation, this paper provides evidence of the rich social meanings constructed by nonstandard11We use the term ‘nonstandard’ to refer to linguistic variants that are not codified in the standardised variety of a language. This reflects usual practice in variationist sociolinguistics. We recognize the hegemony of standard language ideologies and the potential for the term ‘nonstandard’ to further marginalize highly regular and frequent modes of language. However, alternative terms such as ‘regional dialect forms’ do not capture the fact that grammatical items are employed across regional and social styles of speech. Also, as our paper demonstrates, variants identified as ‘nonstandard’ are routinely stigmatized, whereas forms described as ‘regional’ are not always sanctioned in the same way or to the same degree; compare, for instance, the use of negative concord (I didn’t do nothing to mean ‘I didn’t do anything’) with the use of a variant like multiple modals (I might could do it to mean ‘I might be able to do it’). Our use of ‘nonstandard’ is intended to identify variants which undergo prescription precisely because of comparison with standardised alternatives. However, note that we refer to individual nonstandard variants as elements of a person’s diverse repertoire (Snell 2013), without presuming that a specific instance of a nonstandard form equates to speaking in a ‘nonstandard dialect’. grammar. In particular, we show that, whilst definite article reduction (DAR), nonstandard were, and negative concord work together in one British working class young person's speech to produce an intimate, collaborative style, these variants are used strategically to index subtly different states and alignments. We also show that other grammatical variants – use of nonstandard irregular preterit forms and demonstrative them – are not used strategically to convey interactional positioning. The different function of these variants demonstrates the diversity of morphosyntax, raising questions about the relationship between grammar and social meaning, ideology, pragmatics and linguistic processing. We argue that addressing these questions not only benefits our understanding of social meaning across different levels of linguistic architecture, it also provides us with better evidence to advocate for alternative (and more suitable) models of linguistic variability in educational discourse.

How does dialect exposure affect learning to read and spell? An artificial orthography study.

Correlational studies have demonstrated detrimental effects of exposure to a mismatch between a nonstandard dialect at home and a mainstream variety at school on children's literacy skills. However, dialect exposure often is confounded with reduced home literacy, negative teacher expectation, and more limited educational opportunities. To provide proof of concept for a possible causal relationship between variety mismatch and literacy skills, we taught adult learners to read and spell an artificial language with or without dialect variants using an artificial orthography. In 3 experiments, we confirmed earlier findings that reading is more error-prone for contrastive words; that is, words for which different variants exist in the input, especially when learners also acquire the joint meanings of these competing variants. Despite this contrastive deficit, no detriment from variety mismatch emerged for reading and spelling of untrained words, a task equivalent to nonword reading tests routinely administered to young schoolchildren. With longer training, we even found a benefit from variety mismatch on reading and spelling of untrained words. We suggest that such a dialect benefit in literacy learning can arise when competition between different variants leads learners to favor phonologically mediated decoding. Our findings should help to assuage educators' concerns about detrimental effects of linguistic diversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Dialects, registers and intraindividual variation: Outside the scope of generative frameworks?

AbstractThis article explores intraindividual microvariation in dialect syntax. We argue that in many cases the speaker has internalized a different (sub)grammar for each dialectal variety, in line with the hypothesis of universal bilingualism and parallel grammars argued for by Roeper (1999 et seq.). We discuss the question of how we can distinguish parallel grammars from optionality within one grammar, suggesting that the identification of correlating contextual factors might be a promising criterion. However, we also explore a more subtle type of variation, namely cases where a standard variety influences a potentially more vulnerable non-standard variety in a way that makes it exceedingly difficult for the language user and even for a trained linguist to discern what is what. We discuss whether or not these properties should be analysed as properties of another subgrammar (the standard grammar) or as fully integrated (albeit acquired) properties of the non-standard dialect.

Finding a Balance between Diversity and Target Language: A Case of a Japanese Language Program in a Private University

One of the challenges that language professionals face in our increasingly diverse communities is establishing a balance between diversity and language standards. While Standard Japanese can be considered a common language to interact with the majority of Japanese speakers who may not be accustomed to nonnative speech (ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, 2012), the strict requirement to follow the monolingual standard may disregard the legitimacy of multilingual speakers, including nonstandard dialect speakers. This article discusses pros and cons of setting standards in language programs and relevant findings concerning the native speaker fallacy (Author, 2019). Then the author will share his shifting perspectives on errors, interlanguage, dialectal differences, and certain “nonstandard” practices (e.g. translanguaging) in his experience of training, hiring, and supervising teaching assistants at Brigham Young University.