British English Speakers Research Articles

Individual variations in British humour appreciation among Chinese–English bilinguals: Role of socialisation and acculturation

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The primary aim of this study is to investigate individual differences in the appreciation of humour in an L2 with a special focus on British humour. It examined the predictive effects of variables including sociobiographical factors, linguistic profiles, domain-specific communication, and degree of acculturation on L2 (British) humour appreciation among late Chinese–English bilinguals. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted a quantitative approach and used a video-embedded online questionnaire for data collection. A total of 131 UK-based late Chinese–English bilinguals rated the funniness of two short extracts from British sitcoms and answered questions regarding sociobiographical, linguistic, domain-specific communication, and cultural factors. Data and analysis: Funniness rating scores were calculated for each participant and for each humour extract. Spearman’s rho correlation analysis was used to find out the correlations between funniness ratings and different variables. Other non-parametric statistical tests such as Kruskal–Wallis test, Mann–Whitney U test, and Wilcoxon signed-ranks test were run to compare the differences between variables. Findings/conclusions: Chinese–English bilinguals who were more frequently engaged in humour-specific communication with friends and L1 speakers of British English and acculturated to a higher level tended to perceive L2 (British) humour funnier. Originality: The study highlights the role of humour socialisation and acculturation, along with L2 proficiency, in the appreciation of L2 humour. Sociobiographical factors associated with the appreciation of L1 humour may not necessarily predict the appreciation of humour in an L2. Significance/implications: The study contributes to the literature on the predictive factors for the domain of humour in an L2 among bilinguals and offers implications for both the field of bilingualism and humour.

Word norms and measures of linguistic reclamation for LGBTQ+ slurs

Abstract While databases of taboo language word norms exist, none focus specifically on slurs as a category of taboo language. Furthermore, no existing databases include measures of linguistic reclamation, a phenomenon which may specifically affect the processing of slurs. I produced a database in which 155 native or near-native speakers of British English rated 41 LGBTQ+ slurs for a number of word properties and measures of linguistic reclamation. I then ran correlation and demographic group comparison analyses on the resulting database. I found a clear correlation pattern between properties and reclamation behaviours. I also found that there were age-related differences in age of acquisition and familiarity ratings; that gender identity and sexual identity differences were affected by being the target of slurs; and that sexual identity particularly affected differences in reclamation ratings.

T‐tapping in Standard Southern British English: An ‘elite’ sociolinguistic variant?

AbstractSocial class is one of the key axes of sociolinguistic variation, but the speech of those at the top of the class spectrum—the elite—is rarely studied. While T‐glottalling has spread widely across British English accents, a competing variant—T‐tapping—has attracted little scholarly attention in the United Kingdom. This article presents a study of elite speech by examining sociolinguistic variation in T‐tapping among adolescent speakers of Standard Southern British English. Data were collected from interviews with teenagers aged 16–19 at two schools in Hampshire, UK. T‐tapping is led by those who previously attended private school and is used more by boys than girls in formal speech. The findings suggest that T‐tapping may be used to index a combination of authority and informality, which is invoked by elite speakers to assert themselves from a position of privilege while maintaining an image of openness and approachability.

A Corpus-based Study of the Use of Pause Fillers Among British English Speakers

Many people use pause fillers such as um, erm, and er in order to signal to the other person that they have not finished speaking yet. This paper aims to investigate pause fillers and their relationship with the two sociolinguistic variables of age and gender. The data-driven analysis is based on the British National Corpus (BNC). The results show that the sociolinguistic variables of age and gender influence the use of pause fillers among British English speakers, which is proposed to be linked to the advancement of age and an improved fluency among female speakers.

The psychological reality of picture name agreement

Picture name agreement is commonly used as both a control variable and independent variable in studies of language production. It describes the proportion of participants who volunteer a picture's modal name in a norming study—a population-level descriptor—but researchers often assume that name agreement also indexes cognitive processes that occur within individuals. For instance, if norms show that 50% of speakers name a picture as couch, then each time a person tries to name the picture, they might have a 50% chance of selecting couch. An alternative, however, is that name agreement may simply reflect population-level sampling of more stable individual preferences (e.g., 50% of speakers prefer the name couch), continually developed through experience. One way to distinguish between these possibilities – and assess the psychological reality of name agreement – is simply to re-norm pictures with the same individuals. In Experiment 1, we therefore collected timed naming norms for a large set of line drawings from the same 25 native British English speakers twice, 1–2 weeks apart. Results show participants' name choices in Session 2 are jointly predicted by population-level name agreement, from our previous norms, and individuals' own productions in Session 1. Experiment 2 replicated this result and further showed that prior selections predicted Session 3 outcomes better than those in Session 2, in line with an incremental learning account. This is the first direct demonstration that picture name agreement has some psychological validity, but also reveals that it does not directly index within-participant lexical competition as previously assumed.

Social acquisition context matters: Increased neural responses for native but not nonnative taboo words

This study examined whether the context of acquisition of a word influences its visual recognition and subsequent processing. We utilized taboo words, whose meanings are typically acquired socially, to ensure that differences in processing were based on learned social taboo, rather than proficiency. American English-speaking participants made word/non-word decisions on American taboo (native dialect), British taboo (non-native dialect), positive, neutral, and pseudo- words while EEG was recorded. Taboo words were verified as taboo by both American and British English speakers in an independent norming survey. American taboo words showed a more positive amplitude of the Late Positive Complex (LPC), a neural correlate of emotionality and social processing, compared with British taboo words and all other word categories. Moreover, in an item-wise analysis, LPC amplitudes of American taboo words were positively correlated with their taboo ratings. British taboo words did not show this effect. This indicates that American participants, who had very limited social contact with British English, did not have the same perception of social threat from British taboo words as they had from American taboo words. These results point to the importance of social context of acquisition in establishing social-affective meaning in language.

Lexical Alignment to Non-native Speakers

Two picture-matching-game experiments investigated if lexical-referential alignment to non-native speakers is enhanced by a desire to aid communicative success (by saying something the conversation partner can certainly understand), a form of audience design. In Experiment 1, a group of native speakers of British English that was not given evidence of their conversation partners’ picture-matching performance showed more alignment to non-native than to native speakers, while another group that was given such evidence aligned equivalently to the two types of speaker. Experiment 2, conducted with speakers of Castilian Spanish, replicated the greater alignment to non-native than native speakers without feedback. However, Experiment 2 also showed that production of grammatical errors by the confederate produced no additional increase of alignment even though making errors suggests lower communicative competence. We suggest that this pattern is consistent with another collaborative strategy, the desire to model correct usage. Together, these results support a role for audience design in alignment to non-native speakers in structured task-based dialogue, but one that is strategically deployed only when deemed necessary.

The effect of hyperarticulation on speech comprehension under adverse listening conditions.

Comprehension assesses a listener’s ability to construe the meaning of an acoustic signal in order to be able to answer questions about its contents, while intelligibility indicates the extent to which a listener can precisely retrieve the acoustic signal. Previous comprehension studies asking listeners for sentence-level information or narrative-level information used native listeners as participants. This is the first study to look at whether clear speech properties (e.g. expanded vowel space) produce a clear speech benefit at the word level for L2 learners for speech produced in naturalistic settings. This study explored whether hyperarticulated speech was more comprehensible than non-hyperarticulated speech for both L1 British English speakers and early and late L2 British English learners in quiet and in noise. Sixteen British English listeners, 16 native Mandarin Chinese listeners as early learners of L2 and 16 native Mandarin Chinese listeners as late learners of L2 rated hyperarticulated samples versus non-hyperarticulated samples in form of words for comprehension under four listening conditions of varying white noise level (quiet or SNR levels of + 16 dB, + 12 dB or + 8 dB) (3 × 2× 4 mixed design). Mean ratings showed all three groups found hyperarticulated speech samples easier to understand than non-hyperarticulated speech at all listening conditions. Results are discussed in terms of other findings (Uther et al., 2012) that suggest that hyperarticulation may generally improve speech processing for all language groups.

How do 3-year-olds use relevance inferencing to interpret indirect speech?

If a child asks a friend to play football and the friend replies, ‘I have a cough’, the requesting child must make a ‘relevance inference’ to determine the communicative intent. Relevance inferencing is a key component of pragmatics, that is, the ability to integrate social context into language interpretation and use. We tested which cognitive skills relate to relevance inferencing. In addition, we asked whether children’s lab-based pragmatic performance relates to children’s parent-assessed pragmatic language skills. We tested 3.5- to 4-year-old speakers of British English (Study 1: N = 40, Study 2: N = 32). Children were presented with video-recorded vignettes ending with an utterance requiring a relevance inference, for which children made a forced choice. Study 1 measured children’s Theory of Mind, their sentence comprehension and their real-world knowledge and found that only real-world knowledge retained significance in a regression analysis with children’s relevance inferencing as the outcome variable. Study 2 then manipulated children’s world-knowledge through priming but found this did not improve children’s performance on the relevance inferencing task. Study 2 did, however, reveal a significant correlation between children’s relevance inferencing and a measure of morpho-syntactic production. In both studies parents rated their children’s pragmatic language usage in daily life, which was found to relate to performance in our lab-based relevance inferencing task. This set of studies is the first to empirically demonstrate that lab-based measures of relevance inferencing are reflective of children’s pragmatic abilities ‘in the wild’. There was no clear association between relevance inferencing and Theory of Mind. There was mixed evidence for the role of formal language, which should be further investigated. Finally, real-world knowledge was indeed associated with relevance inferencing but future experimental work is required to test causal relations.

Exploring phonetic cues to persuasive oral presentation: A study with British English speakers and English L2 learners

Persuasiveness in oral communication in English can be expressed with various vocal phonetic cues that may not be readily accessible to English second language (L2) learners whose native language may employ a different set of cues. With a goal to increase L2 learners’ perceived spoken confidence and persuasiveness, and obtain empirical evidence for phonetic adjustments that native English speakers make to influence listeners, the current study explored the use of consonant prolongation in stressed syllable onsets for emphasis by native British English speakers and English L2 learners. The native speakers’ durations of continuant consonants and voiceless stop consonant voice onset times (VOTs) in (1) neutrally-produced speech and (2) persuasively delivered motivational/shocking/emotional messages were compared to Latvian L2 English speakers’ productions. The results revealed that in persuasive speech, the British speakers’ consonantal durations, particularly those of continuants, got significantly longer relative to the vowels that followed them; for English L2 learners, the duration of consonants did not change as a factor of speech type. This is in line with our previous research with American English speakers and carries implications for L2 speech learning and teaching.

The duration of word-final s in English: A comparison of regular-plural and pluralia-tantum nouns

The alveolar fricative occurs in word-final position in English in different grammatical functions. Nominal suffixes may indicate plurality (e.g. cars), genitive case (e.g. car’s) or plurality and genitive case in cumulation (e.g. cars’). Further, there are the third person singular verbal suffix (e.g. she fears) and the cliticized forms of the third person singular forms of have and be (e.g. she’s been lucky; she’s friendly). There is also non-affixal s (e.g. freeze (noun)). Against the standard view that all these types are homophonous, several empirical studies have shown that at least some of the fricatives listed can actually be differentiated in their duration. The present article expands this line of research and considers a further case, which has not been included in previous analyses: pluralia-tantum nouns (e.g. goggles). We report on a carefully controlled reading study in which native speakers of British English produced pluralia-tantum and comparable regular-plural nouns (e.g. toggles). The duration of the word-final fricative was measured, and it was found that the two do not systematically differ in this acoustic parameter. The new data are interpreted in comparison to relevant previous studies, and against the background of the similarities of pluralia-tantum and regular-plural nouns.

Nativeness, social distance and structural convergence in dialogue

ABSTRACT This study extends the logic of prior studies showing phonetic convergence between interlocutors to the structural domain. We ask whether listeners’ adaptation of the syntactic forms they produce depends on their perceptions about their interlocutor's social proximity and linguistic competence, using structural priming as a measure of convergence. Two experiments compared structural priming in dialogues between native British English speakers and (i) other native British English speakers, (ii) native speakers of North American English, and (iii) non-native speakers of English, to assess to what extent interlocutor characteristics influence structural convergence in dialogue. Our findings suggest that rates of structural convergence depend both on a speaker's pre-existing structural biases for particular verbs, and their perception of (linguistic or social) similarity to their interlocutor. This suggests that low-level mechanisms underlying structural convergence may be mediated by beliefs about how interlocutors are socially situated with respect to each other.

A corpus-based investigation of semantic and syntactic differences between the two major future tense constructions

AbstractEnglish has two major future tense constructions,willandbe going to. Additionally, English can also use the present tense with a future-marking adverbial to express futurity. However, the distributions of these future markers are not free but limited. Instead of discriminating the differences among these distributions through direct comparison to etymological meanings or intuitive examples, this study offers an account for the semantic and syntactic differences between the two major English future tense constructions by analyzing data retrieved from the British National Corpus (BNC). The focus of attention is chiefly on the semantic and syntactic differences that lead to the choices British English native speakers make when expressing futurity. Based on the empirical analysis of data from the BNC, this study demonstrates that distribution of the future tense constructions seems sensitive to the following factors: (1) event-time orientation (temporal posteriority) or present-time orientation (prospective aspect), (2) the levels of verbal dynamicity in the whole sentence, (3) contexts of subordination, and (4) different text categories. The analysis suggests that the futurity constructions are not in the same distribution but are semantically and syntactically different. Utilizing its findings, this study aims to enhance second language learners’ expression of futurity by providing pedagogical suggestions.

Acoustic salience in the evaluations of intelligibility and foreign accentedness of nonnative vowel production

The study investigates the relative weighting of spectral and temporal acoustic cues in native speakers’ (NS) perception of vowels produced by nonnative speakers (NNS). Acoustic measurements were taken of the spectral and temporal properties of vowels produced by Chinese L2 speakers of English, and by native speakers of American English and British English, who were recruited to pronounce monosyllabic words containing 18 monophthongs and diphthongs in English. In the perception experiment, 25 native English speakers (16 American and 9 British) provided evaluations of intelligibility and ratings of foreign accentedness of the non-native vowels. A correlation analysis was conducted between the NS perception results and the acoustic computation of the NNS production data. The results show that spectral properties of vowels are significantly related to both American and British speakers’ evaluation of English vowels produced by Chinese L2 speakers, whereas the temporal information has no significant correlation to NS perceptual evaluations. The correlation between acoustic measurements and perceptual evaluations confirms that the most significant acoustic cue of English vowels is spectral rather than temporal information in perception.

Linguistic politeness of Pakistani English and British English speakers: Culture and gender perspectives

This study examines sociocultural, pragmatic, and gender differences between native speakers of British English (BritE) and Pakistani English speakers (PakE) in expressing apology responses (ARs). Based on a discourse completion task (DCT) using data from 60 speakers of both cultures, the study focuses on the variations in the use of apology response strategies in three severe and three non-severe situations. The findings show that the two groups use a variety of politeness strategies in expressing apology responses. The majority of BritE speakers tend to use ARs with the relatively strong hearer-oriented strategies (Acceptance). PakE ARs, on the other hand, seem to be dominated by the frequent use of Acknowledgment, with speaker-oriented strategies. Similarly, BritE speakers tend to use more indirect (Evasion) strategies as compared to PakE speakers. These results have proven that both male and female English-using Pakistanis are amazingly obvious and direct in their apology responses. Furthermore, the findings do not show quite pronounced gender differences both within and between the two cultures in terms of the strategy use and expressions.

Social distance and speech behavior: A case of Pakistani English speakers’ apology responses

This study investigates the production and perception of apology responses (ARs) of English-using Pakistanis (L2), British English speakers (Native speakers of the target language), and Pakistani Urdu speaker (L1) under the influence of social distance variables. For data collection, two instruments are used; a discourse completion test (DCT in English and Urdu) and a scale response questionnaire (SRQ in English and Urdu). Findings signal that three groups tend to use more Acceptance strategies with the interlocutors of social distance than the close and neutral level respondents, moreover, close and distant level participants tend to favor the use of Acknowledgement ARs than neutral social distance participants, besides, the Evasion category demonstrates that BritE speakers of close social distance prefer the use of Evasion (EV) ARs more often than EuP and PakU. Further, at neutral and distant levels, three groups tend to use a similar proportion of EV strategies. The least number of ARs interacting with social distance factor is used in Rejection category. The close social distance level participants of three groups (EuP, BritE, and PakU) tend to prefer the use of more Rejection strategies than the participants of neutral and distant social distance levels. The SRQ results indicate the operation of negative pragmatic transfer where English-using Pakistanis have assigned the similar values in Situation1 and Situation4 as the PakU group participants have allocated. Generally, both EuP and PakU group approximated the target culture’s sociopragmatic knowledge, both groups assessed the speaker’s close and distant social relation quite significantly equal a pattern that indicates development towards the target culture’s sociopragmatic norms while still under the influence of the L1

Caught between Two Cultures: Pragmatic Transfer in English-using Pakistanis Apology Responses

In Pragmatics, scholars have given special attention to study the influence of leaners culture and social rules in understanding and using target language pragmatics. For this purpose, speech acts have been studied quite widely. This study investigates the speech act of responding to apology in Pakistani English, British English and Pakistani Urdu, and tries to highlight whether respondents transfer their cultural and social rules in the target language or not. The present study followed quantitative approach for data collection and analysis. A discourse completion test (DCT), consists of 12 apology response scenarios is used for data collection. The findings illustrate that English-using Pakistanis pragmatic choices are clearly influenced by their perceptions of various sociocultural and contextual variables. The English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers are found using two main strategies (Acceptance, and Acknowledgment). In contrast, British English speakers tend to use Acceptance and Evasion strategies more often. Further, the findings have indicated that English-using Pakistanis and Pakistani Urdu speakers have used more Rejection strategies than their British English counterparts, though such communicative features are not salient in their ARs, and Pakistanis are surprisingly found quite clear and direct. The findings of the study may be helpful to English teachers who should be made aware that L2 learners’ pragmatic transfer is influenced by learners’ culture and social rules, and, as a result, should not be treated simply as a pragmatic ‘error’ or ‘failure’ to be corrected and criticized.

Intelligibility of British- and American-Accented Sentences for American Younger and Older Listeners With and Without Hearing Loss

Older adults with hearing loss often report difficulty understanding British-accented speech, such as in television or movies, after having understood such speech in the past. A few studies have examined the intelligibility of various United States regional and non-U.S. varieties of English for American listeners, but only for young adults with normal hearing. This preliminary study sought to determine whether British-accented sentences were less intelligible than American-accented sentences for American younger and older adults with normal hearing and for older adults with hearing loss. A mixed-effects design, with talker accent and listening condition as within-subjects factors and listener group as a between-subjects factor. Three listener groups consisting of 16 young adults with normal hearing, 15 older adults with essentially normal hearing, and 22 older adults with sloping sensorineural hearing loss. Sentences produced by one General American English speaker and one British English speaker were presented to listeners at 70 dB sound pressure level in quiet and in babble. Signal-to-noise ratios for the latter varied among the listener groups. Responses were typed into a textbox and saved on each trial. Effects of accent, listening condition, and listener group were assessed using linear mixed-effects models. American- and British-accented sentences were equally intelligible in quiet, but intelligibility in noise was lower for British-accented sentences than American-accented sentences. These intelligibility differences were similar for all three groups. British-accented sentences were less intelligible than those produced by an American talker, but only in noise.

A Comparative Phonological Study of Elision in Standard British English and Central Kurdish

This study investigates speech sound omission by native speakers of Standard British English and Central Kurdish. It aims to explore how a sound or sounds can be dropped in a spoken language to simplify it. The study compares English and Kurdish to determine similar and dissimilar features related to the elision of sounds. Additionally, the study attempts to ascertain the reasons for omitting of a sound or sounds in each language.

Second language perception of English vowels by Portuguese learners: The effect of stimulus type

The present study investigated L2 English vowel perception and the effect of stimulus type on the identification of vowel segments that present difficulties for Portuguese learners. It also examined the effect of subject factors such as age of acquisition, length of formal instruction, language use and vocabulary size, on the L2 learners’ perceptual performance. Twenty-nine adult Portuguese learners of English were tested on six English vowels (/iː ɪ ɛ æ ɜː ʌ/) with two tasks, differing in stimulus type, i.e., in the lexical status of trials (real words and pseudo words) in which the target vowels were auditorily presented. The testing stimuli consisted of 72 trials with real CVC words and 72 trials with pseudo CVC words, naturally produced by two speakers of standard southern British English (SSBE). The L2 vocabulary size of the participants was measured with two receptive vocabulary size tests and the language background data, viz. age of learning, length of formal instruction and L2 use was collected with a questionnaire. Results confirmed the Portuguese learners’ difficulties in accurately categorizing the target vowels, particularly when identifying the vowel target sounds embedded in pseudo words, which suggests that L2 phonological categories may be established after lexical forms. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between L2 language use and accurate perception of four of the target vowels, which indicates that the more frequently learners use the target language, the more accurate is their L2 English vowel perception.