US English Research Articles

Perceptual Benefits of Linguistic Diversity and Language Background: Evidence from Auditory Free Classification of English Dialect Accents and Asian-Accented English

Non-linguistic factors leave a distinct thumbprint on our speech production that is perceptible to listeners. A steadily growing line of research demonstrates that listeners can perceive a contrast between native and non-native (L2) speakers based on accents and further classify these speakers according to dialectal variation, even when they are not native speakers of a language. Most of these studies have focused on dialectal variation within US English speakers, a combination of US and International English dialects, or L2 speakers representing a wide range of languages. Most have also featured listeners who are monolingual native speakers of the target language coming from a homogenous background, or a contrast between these and a targeted set of L2 speakers. We therefore lack knowledge of how exposure to, or familiarity with, diverse accents and languages, or specific native language competence of the native language of L2 speakers, can guide listeners’ accent perception and categorization. In this research, we employed a free classification task, presenting listeners with speech samples of native speakers with accents representing multiple English dialects, and L2 speakers of nine Asian languages across three geographic regions speaking Asian-accented English. There were six groups of listeners: monolingual US English listeners in a diverse linguistic context, monolingual US English listeners in a homogeneous linguistic context, native speakers of a non-Asian language and English (bilinguals), and native speakers of each of the three target Asian language groups who are L2 speakers of English. The results reveal that nearly all listeners are sensitive to accents capturing native/L2 contrasts and dialectal variation in English. While regular exposure to a diversity of accents results in increased classification accuracy, classification of Asian L2-accented English speakers is best performed when there is alignment of similar language family and geographic area, as demonstrated by South Asian listeners.

임원배상책임보험의 통지조항 - 기업보험성 및 설명의무와 관련하여

D&O insurance goes beyond covering the risk of lawsuits against directors’ personal property and has become an essential element for the sustainable management of companies. The D&O insurance subscription rate of listed companies in Korea has increased to about 75% as of 2023, but the number of claims in 2022 is 122 and the loss ratio is only 9.6%. The reason why D&O insurance is not activated in Korea is due to the problem of corporate governance in which diectors are not effectively held accountable, as well as the English terms and conditions of the United States, which are based on American corporate law, which is different from Korea’s. The terms and conditions have been written, and the Korean terms and the US English terms and conditions are used as is, resulting in unclear or unreasonable interpretations. In particular, the notice provision, which is the essence of claims-made policy, is the most confusing part in practice and rulings. The notice provision makes immediate notification of a claim a condition precedent for policy and includes the obligation to consent in advance to settlement or defense costs. Since D&O insurance is a corporate insurance, the principle of prohibition of disadvantageous changes in Article 663 of the Commercial Act does not apply, and the duty to explain should be exempted or relieved. If the obligation to notify the occurrence of an insurance accident is not complied with and prior consent for defense costs is not obtained, the insurance shall not be paid. Even if the insurer is in breach of the duty to explain, it should be solved by the interpretation of terms and conditions, and the insurer’s reponsibility for damages.

Linguistic, Content and Face Validity of the Swedish Version of a Quality-of-Life Assessment for Children, Teenagers and Adults with Spina Bifida.

Spina bifida includes a spectrum of different neural tube defects. Myelomeningocele is the most serious type and is associated with a risk of paralysis and sensory dysfunction below the affected level, bladder/bowel dysfunction, brain dysmorphology, and impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The aim of this study was to describe the establishment of linguistic, content and face validity of the Swedish version of a Quality-of-Life Assessment for children (QUALAS-C, n = 10 items), teenagers (QUALAS-T, n = 10 items) and adults with spina bifida (QUALAS-A, n = 15 items) based on the original US English versions. The process included close collaboration with the original instrument developer and complied with international standards on patient-reported outcome measurements. The procedure includes forward translation, expert and patient/parent review and reconciliation, back translation, back translation review and cognitive debriefing interviews with 16 people with spina bifida aged 8 to 33, providing them with the possibility of evaluating the clarity, adequacy, and comprehensiveness of QUALAS-C, QUALAS-T and QUALAS-A, respectively. The interviews lasted a median of 15 min (range 8-16) for QUALAS-C, 10 min (range 9-15) for QUALAS-T and 24 min (range 9-38) for QUALAS-A. Four main issues/topics needed attention and discussion after both the forward and back translation. Following the back translation review, all issues were resolved. The patient feedback revealed recognition of the HRQoL issues included in QUALAS, and also difficulties in understanding some questions. After the patients' evaluation, four items were reworded for clarity. No study participant reported a wish to add to or remove questions from QUALAS. Hence, the Swedish versions of QUALAS became conceptually equivalent to the original US English versions and achieved linguistic, content and face validity. While empowering the voices of people with spina bifida, these results also enable their HRQoL to be properly assessed in research and clinical care in Sweden and in international studies.

Kincretism in crosslinguistic perspective

Traditional anthropology in the vein of Morgan (1871) distinguishes between descriptive and classificatory kinship terms. Mainstream US English father functions as a descriptive term, as it conventionally only indicates one relationship type: `'ego's begetter'. In contrast, Aboriginal English father functions as a classificatory term, as it conventionally indicates both 'ego's begetter' and `'ego's begetter's brother'. We propose that it is possible to study classificatory kinship in the same manner that we study morphological syncretism in nominal and verbal paradigms. We propose toy features for kinship and demonstrate that Murdock's (1949) classical hexapartite typology of kinship patterns is best thought of as a set of metasyncretisms (Harley 2008) generated by impoverishment. In theoretical terms, we contribute to the broader research program of Crossmodular Structural Parallelism (Nevins 2008), in that we argue that kintactic features may interact and be modified in ways homologous to phonological and morphological features. In empirical terms, we provide a genealogically diverse sample of underdescribed language-specific kincretisms outside of the broader Murdockian typology, with an emphasis on kincretisms that involve affinal terms.

The use of praise upgrades in compliment sequences in natural conversations between young adults in dating relationships

Research on the speech acts of compliments (Cs) and compliment responses (CRs) has attracted a wide variety of research attention over the last several decades. Cs and CRs index an array of relational dimensions that govern sociocultural expressions of rapport and solidarity. Their importance has been well documented in intra- and intercultural communication pragmatics research across different languages. This study used a discourse analytic approach to examine one type of rare and often underutilized CR strategy, the praise upgrade, and its surprisingly frequent use as a CR response across a corpus of casual conversations between US English speaking young adults in a serious dating relationship. The analyses demonstrate that praise upgrades were often exaggerated and playful responses that re-position the compliment as somewhat absurd and thus not entirely serious. Ironic or playful CR upgrades to Cs worked to dilute the C itself while also attending to the subject-side risks of both the one formulating the C and the one receiving it. Three types of praise upgrades were identified: 1) praise upgrades that playfully rendered the compliment as absurd; 2) praise upgrades with tongue-in-cheek self-praise or boasts; 3) praise upgrades that redefined the compliment on the recipient's terms.

Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social media

Language change is influenced by many factors, but often starts from synchronic variation, where multiple linguistic patterns or forms coexist, or where different speech communities use language in increasingly different ways. Besides regional or economic reasons, communities may form and segregate based on political alignment. The latter, referred to as political polarization, is of growing societal concern across the world. Here we map and quantify linguistic divergence across the partisan left-right divide in the United States, using social media data. We develop a general methodology to delineate (social) media users by their political preference, based on which (potentially biased) news media accounts they do and do not follow on a given platform. Our data consists of 1.5M short posts by 10k users (about 20M words) from the social media platform Twitter (now “X”). Delineating this sample involved mining the platform for the lists of followers (n = 422M) of 72 large news media accounts. We quantify divergence in topics of conversation and word frequencies, messaging sentiment, and lexical semantics of words and emoji. We find signs of linguistic divergence across all these aspects, especially in topics and themes of conversation, in line with previous research. While US American English remains largely intelligible within its large speech community, our findings point at areas where miscommunication may eventually arise given ongoing polarization and therefore potential linguistic divergence. Our flexible methodology — combining data mining, lexicostatistics, machine learning, large language models and a systematic human annotation approach — is largely language and platform agnostic. In other words, while we focus here on US political divides and US English, the same approach is applicable to other countries, languages, and social media platforms.

Beyond the Front Yard: The Dehumanizing Message of Accent-Altering Technology

Abstract Over the past decade, the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as it relates to the speech and voice recognition industry, has established itself as a multibillion-dollar global market, but at whose expense? In this forum article, we amplify the current critiques of the architectures of large language models being used increasingly in daily life. Our commentary exposes emerging AI accent modification technology and services as agents of racial commodification and linguistic dominance, as it rests on the perceived superiority of standardized US English. We discuss our concern for such services leaching into academia. We argue that this technology follows a standardized language framework, which poses a fundamental problem of being informed by purist monolingual principles. These principles often help to perpetuate and maintain harmful raciolinguistic ideologies that result in language discrimination and the continual framing of the language practices of racially minoritized speakers as deficient. Thus, we write this piece with the intent to expose the fabricated humanity of accent modification technology whose existence perpetuates capitalism’s reliance on dehumanization for economic advancement and the legacy and reproduction of white language superiority.

“This is my hill to die on”: effects of far-right conservative pushback on US English teachers and their classroom practice

PurposeFrom book challenges to anti–critical race theory and anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning legislation, US English teachers have been on the receiving end of a considerable amount of far-right conservative pushback. This study aims to explore the effects of conservative pushback on individual English teachers and their classroom practice. What pushbacks have individual English teachers faced? How has pushback impacted their teaching? What strategies have they developed for navigating pushback?Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study explores secondary English teachers’ reported experiences with conservative backlash as reported in 15 semi-structured interviews conducted between May 2022 and August 2023.FindingsParticipants reported feeling the pressure of increased levels of pushback, and many reported censoring their book selections to avoid additional public scrutiny. At the same time, they also described a range of strategies they have developed for protecting themselves and their practice, such as codifying curriculum, increasing transparency, formalizing review processes for challenging books and strengthening their resolve to resist.Originality/valueThis study offers a timely window on a pressing problem affecting the daily practice of English teachers in the USA.

Clinical Manifestations.

The California Cognitive Assessment Battery (CCAB; ccabstudy.com) is a remotely monitored, at-home, computerized behavioral test and questionnaire suite. Here we evaluate the interpretation of 25 tests within the US English version of the CCAB using both an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of 155 healthy adults and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of 312 healthy older adults participating in a longitudinal study. We also estimated cross-sectional age gradients for best fitting latent factors [1]. First, one set of "classic" latent factors (from 1 factor to 8 factors) was extracted from the literature [2][3][4] for assignment of CCAB tests into traditional categories. Second, 155 adult participants (age 22-86 y.o., mn 54, 57% male, education 8-20 yrs., md 14) participated in a prefinal version of the CCAB. EFA was performed on their primary CCAB results using the 'psych' (v. 1.9.12.31-1) toolbox in R (v. 3.6.3) with 11 different rotations to extract a second set of CFA latent factors. Third, above two sets of latent factors were used in the 'lavaan' CFA toolbox (v. 0.6.5-1) in R and applied to the first timepoint (enrollment and session 1) of CCAB longitudinal data from an older adult group (age 56-89 y.o., mn 71, 58% male, education 0-20 yrs., mn 14). The EFA and CFA model fit characteristics (Fig 1) show moderately good fits for the EFA and best fitting CFA models. The EFA produced reasonable models from 2 factors to 6 factors. The best fitting "classic" CFA along with its latent factor age regressions is shown in Figure 2. The best fitting EFA-derived CFA along with its latent factor age regressions is shown in Figure 3. The best-fit classic CFA results showed moderately good fit, and visual tests of both speed and memory showed steeper cross-sectional age gradients than did respective verbal response tests. The EFA-derived latent factors were better fitting than were the classic factors as they were derived from the CCAB itself. In both cases, however, CCAB test speed measures showed steeper cross-sectional age gradients than did memory measures. Ongoing work will characterize longitudinal latent factor age gradients.

Race, place, and education: Charting thewine-whinemerger in the US South

Over the past century, the wine-whine merger has transitioned from a localized regional feature to a nearly ubiquitous characteristic of US English, a pattern of language change whose social correlates have largely gone unexplored. The present study draws from the Digital Archive of Southern Speech (Kretzschmar et al. 2013), a database of 64 linguistic interviews collected 1970-1983, to analyze the distribution of [hw] and [w] across social and linguistic variables within a time and place where [hw] was still common. Results reveal that while all speakers exhibited variation between [hw] and [w], with content words exhibiting [hw] at higher rates than function words, intra-speaker variation remained stable across apparent time for White speakers, suggesting that the wine-whine merger had not yet reached the US South. However, [hw] use sharply declined among Black speakers over the same period, demonstrating a divergence from the local White varieties corresponding to a changing cultural landscape. Variation in [hw] also occurs across sub-regions of the South. Finally, college-educated speakers were more likely to use [hw], suggesting that this variable should be interpreted as a prestige feature that persisted in the South.

Lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication in simultaneously interpreted texts: a cognitive perspective.

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a cognitively demanding task that imposes a heavy cognitive load on interpreters. Interpreting into one's native (A language) or non-native language (B language), known as interpreting directionality, involves different cognitive demands. The cognitive requirements of simultaneous interpreting as well as interpreting directionality affect the interpreting process and product. This current study focused on the lexical features of a specially designed corpus of United Nations Security Council speeches. The corpus included non-interpreted speeches in US English (SubCorpusE), and texts interpreted from Chinese into English (A-into-B interpreted texts, SubCorpusC-E) and from Russian into English (B-into-A interpreted texts, SubCorpusR-E). Ten measures were used to analyze the lexical features of each subcorpus in terms of lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication. The three subcorpora were regrouped into two pairs for the two research questions: SubCorpusR-E versus SubCorpusE and SubCorpusR-E versus SubCorpusC-E. The results showed that the interpreted texts in SubCorpusR-E exhibited simpler vocabulary features than the non-interpreted texts in SubCorpusE. In addition, compared with the A-into-B interpreted texts, the B-into-A interpreted texts demonstrated simplified lexical characteristics. The lexical features of the interpreted texts reflect that experienced simultaneous interpreters consciously adopt a simplified vocabulary approach to manage the cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting. This study provides new insights into the cognitive aspects of simultaneous interpreting, the impact of directionality, and the role of lexical strategies. These findings have practical implications for interpreter training, professional growth, and maintaining interpreting quality in diverse settings.

The Ectodermal Dysplasias-Burden of Disease Score: Development and Validation of an Ectodermal Dysplasia Family/Parental Burden Score.

Ectodermal dysplasias are genetic conditions affecting the development and/or homeostasis of 2 or more ectodermal derivatives, including hair, teeth, nails, and certain glands. No tool is available to assess the burden of ectodermal dysplasias and its multidimensional impact on patients and their families. This study developed and validated a familial/parental 19-item burden questionnaire designed specifically for ectodermal dysplasias. Each group of questions was linked to 1 of the following dimensions: (i) Impact of the disease on social life and hobbies; (ii) Future prospects; (iii) Restraint of the disease on outdoor activities; (iv) Financial burden of the disease; (v) Acceptance of the disease. Cronbach's alpha was 0.91 for the entire Ectodermal Dysplasias-Burden of Disease (ED-BD) scale, confirming excellent internal coherence. Intradimensional coherences all demonstrated excellent reliability (α > 0.76). The ED-BD questionnaire was highly correlated with the Short Form-12 and Psychological General Well Being Index validated questionnaires. Cultural and linguistic validation in US English was conducted. Development and validation of the questionnaire was based on data from patients with the 2 main ectodermal dysplasias subtypes. This ED-BD questionnaire represents the first specific assessment tool for evaluating the familial/parental burden of ectodermal dysplasias.

Doing swearing across languages – The curious case of subtitling

How is swearing done in subtitling across languages? This study of subtitles in different languages for Lonergan's 2016 film Manchester by the sea addresses the question with a particular goal in mind: not so much to identify and typologise translation strategies for swearing in the dataset, or not just, but to inspect/document the range of resources involved, at the interface of linguistics and pragmatics, in generating meaning-making options for interlingual sense-making, and publics with very different linguistic and (socio-)cultural profiles.Most frequently occurring swearwords from dialogues in US English are considered in subtitling representation across the languages in the dataset – English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. Frequency and concordance data are the platform for qualitative analyses of a subset of units from different taboo domains in full textual context (‘fuck’, ‘shit’, ‘God’ and variants), from a broadly cross-cultural pragmatics perspective.The study is underpinned by two main lines of enquiry: how linguistic and/or pragmatic specificities of the languages considered may impact on representation; and critically, how the medium itself may shape representation above and beyond difference into a distinctive and richly expressive instantiation of cinematic discourse, as what is revealingly for translation, and pragmatics, the curious case of subtitling.

An Experimental Exploration of Quotidian Framing

Abstract Quotidian framing is a pragmatic strategy originally observed in studies of conversations among older women in Japan (Matsumoto, 2011). In the observed conversations, when recounting a painful event such as the death of a husband, the narrator included trivial details from the perspective of ordinary life, thereby reframing the extraordinary event into the “quotidian” with the apparent effect of lightening the atmosphere and regaining a normal life. In the current paper, we investigate to what extent this strategy is also acceptable in other languages and in situations with other participants, and we aim to gather empirical evidence on the functions of this strategy. The languages investigated are Japanese and US English. Our procedure was to first identify two representative examples from the original data set and to condense the original story told in conversational interaction into more coherent stories that can be told in one multi-turn unit. Then, we had native speakers of the respective target languages perform the narrations, using a technique that has been shown to produce prosodic realizations with very similar characteristics as authentic conversational speech. The audio files thus created were then combined with videos of a small, humanoid robot speaking to a female listener, who was portrayed from the back. We chose a female voice for the robot and a female listener since the original conversations were carried out among female speakers. The videos were then played to 50 US and 50 Japanese participants in an online questionnaire. The results confirm the suspected pragmatic effects of quotidian framing for a larger age group, for different genders and across cultures. Furthermore, the study provides another example of the usefulness of human-robot interactions as testbed for cross-cultural research.

A comparative analysis of English nuclear stress principles in conversation

AbstractNuclear stress (or sentence stress) as a prosodic feature marks information flow in spoken English, and has received some treatment in the linguistics literature, most notably in pragmatics, but less so in newer phonological paradigms. Current theories in linguistics might shed light on this feature, such as Optimality Theory (OT) and cognitive grammar (CG). This paper compares potential insights and likely predictions of these two approaches for nuclear stress, by examining a recorded conversation of native US English speakers. The descriptive statistics indicate stress pattern distributions as expected, and some stress tokens show particular pragmatic and discourse functions of nuclear stress. The OT framework can better explain the interaction of different levels of prosody, grammar, and information structure, while CG might offer a more holistic explanation of stress, and its sociopragmatic and discourse functions, and may thus be likely more applicable to discourse studies, applied linguistics, and pedagogy. Implications are discussed for a CG theory of prosodic phonology, and for L2 pedagogy.

Housing policy and linguistic profiling: An audit study of three American dialects

The 1968 Fair Housing Act protects consumers from discrimination based on membership in protected classes, such as their gender, race, and ability. There is a large gap, however, between what this policy seeks to protect and the lived experiences of certain individuals, since many listeners continue to link the production of non-Standard speech varieties with social stereotypes. In light of the findings of Purnell et al. (1999), who demonstrated that such judgments negatively affect housing access, this study was designed to determine if linguistic profiling remains observable in the contemporary housing market. Through an audit of ninety publicly listed rental properties in three demographically heterogeneous Knoxville, TN, neighborhoods, the study analyzed the effects of using three different American dialects: African American Language (AAL), Mainstream US English (MUSE), and Southern American (SA). A single, multidialectal speaker asked property managers questions about each unit and neighborhood. The outcomes were assessed in terms of (i) the caller’s success in gaining an appointment to view the property and (ii) the relation of dialect and neighborhood to the phenomenon of local prestige A key finding is that using non-Standard voices produces significantly better outcomes in neighborhoods with demographics that match those of the indexed social characteristics of the given non-Standard speech variety (e.g. Blackness with AAL in zip code 37914). Results from an attribute assessment are also reported, revealing how general listeners categorize and respond to speech used in the audit study. Analyses of attribute assessments reveal that three very different character profiles emerge from a single person’s speech varieties. These results have stark policy implications, as these linguistic profiles develop without listeners having made accurate or consistent identification of social information—like the race of the speaker—in their percepts. Federal antidiscrimination policy must be adjusted to protect individuals who experience voice-based oppression—in the housing market and across institutions. This study adds to the growing evidence such individuals can use to challenge FHA violations in voice-only contexts.*

The interaction between motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action language: a cross-cultural study

Growing evidence has revealed the crucial role of motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action language. However, there is still a lack of understanding of how motor and spatial processes interact when there are multiple actors involved, and if embodied processes are consistent across different cultures. To address this gap, we examined the interaction between motor simulation and spatial perspective-taking in action-sentences comprehension, along with the consistency of embodied processes across cultures. We collected data from Italian and US English speakers using an online sentence-picture verification task. The participants completed four conditions: two congruent (i.e., the participant is the agent in the sentence and the photo; the agent is someone else interacting with the participant in both the sentence and the picture) and two incongruent (i.e., the agents of the sentence and the picture do not match). The results show that when the perspective of the picture matched that described in the sentence-processing reaction times (RTs) were faster than in the incongruent conditions. In the congruent conditions where the agent is someone else, RTs were slower compared to the condition where the participant is the agent. This has been interpreted as claiming that motor simulation and perspective-taking are independent processes interacting during sentence comprehension (e.g., motor simulation is always run in the role of the agent, but we can adopt multiple perspectives depending on the pronouns and the contextual cues). Furthermore, Bayesian analysis provided evidence that embodied processing of action language entwines a common mechanism, suggesting cross-cultural consistency of embodied processes.

Listener bias and intelligibility of unfamiliar varieties of a language

Speech intelligibility depends on a combination of the speech itself and of the listener. In terms of speech, unfamiliar varieties (such as foreign-accented speech or speech produced in an unfamiliar dialect) are generally less intelligible than speech produced in a variety that matches that of the listener. In terms of the listener, studies have found that listener experience affects intelligibility of unfamiliar varieties of a language. The current study explores the extent to which a listener’s biases toward globalization and immigration predict speech intelligibility. High and low predictability sentences from three men (US English, Scottish English, Mandarin-accented English) were mixed with background noise. Fifty L1 US English listeners first typed the final word of each sentence and were then asked to answer questions related to their views on globalism and nationalism. As expected, listeners were more accurate in the high compared to low predictability sentences. Surprisingly, the Mandarin-accented speaker was the most intelligible. A follow-up study with duration-normalized samples found the same result. Contrary to expectations, listener responses to the globalist-nationalist survey had no impact on intelligibility. This may suggest that difficulty understanding unfamiliar varieties of a language is not related to listener attitudes.

Comparing pre-linguistic normalization models against US English listeners’ vowel perception

One of the central computational challenges for speech perception is that talkers differ in pronunciation--i.e., how they map linguistic categories and meanings onto the acoustic signal. Yet, listeners typically overcome these difficulties within minutes (Clarke & Garrett, 2004; Xie et al., 2018). The mechanisms that underlie these adaptive abilities remain unclear. One influential hypothesis holds that listeners achieve robust speech perception across talkers through low-level pre-linguistic normalization. We investigate the role of normalization in the perception of L1-US English vowels. We train ideal observers (IOs) on unnormalized or normalized acoustic cues using a phonetic database of 8 /h-VOWEL-d/ words of US English (N = 1240 recordings from 16 talkers, Xie & Jaeger, 2020). All IOs had 0 DFs in predicting perception—i.e., their predictions are completely determined by pronunciation statistics. We compare the IOs’ predictions against L1-US English listeners’ 8-way categorization responses for /h-VOWEL-d/ words in a web-based experiment. We find that (1) pre-linguistic normalization substantially improves the fit to human responses from 74% to 90% of best-possible performance (chance = 12.5%); (2) the best-performing normalization accounts centered and/or scaled formants by talker; and (3) general purpose normalization (C-CuRE, McMurray & Jongman, 2011) performed as well as vowel-specific normalization.

Exploring macro-rhythm in African American English

This study contributes to a growing body of research on quantifying the theory of macro-rhythm, a model of prosodic typology proposed by Sun-Ah Jun (2014) that looks at the global pitch patterns of an utterance, through comparing African American English (AAE) to Mainstream (white) US English (MUSE). Based on prior research on intonation, rhythm, and prosody in AAE (cf. Thomas, 2015 for a thorough overview), we predicted that AAE would have stronger macro-rhythm than MUSE, such that speakers would produce higher peaks and lower valleys, pitch excursions of greater magnitude, have a greater consistency in slope, a greater frequency of high (H) and low (L) pitch targets, and more regular spacing of these pitch targets. Data weretaken from the Valdosta group of the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL) for Black speakers and the Buckeye corpus for white speakers. Contrary to our expectations, Buckeye speakers proved to be more macro-rhythmic than their CORAAL counterparts in all but one metric, but these results confirm that macro-rhythm is a viable method for cross-dialectal analysis as it reveals quantifiable differences between speaker dialect groups of the same language.