Presenter
Vivian Wong, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta
Abstract
People judge others based on their language competence as well as ethnic identifiers of speech like accentedness. The primary objective of the study is to determine the relationship between these two types of speech evaluations, distinguished as linguistic and socio-emotive approaches. The linguistic approach addresses various speech pronunciation dimensions, including comprehensibility, fluency and accentedness, while the socio-emotive characteristics refer to stereotypic and personal traits associated with the speech style, particularly warmth and competence dimensions. While the first two linguistic dimensions can develop more, accentedness has limited extent to develop, typically solidifying after a year or two after settlement. Therefore, my hypothesis predicts that there will be a positive correlation between comprehensibility, as well as fluency, and warmth and competence, while a negative correlation will be found between accentedness and warmth and competence. The participants, who are Canadian-born English monolinguals, will evaluate Chinese immigrants’ speech samples about the aforementioned dimensions. The participants will complete their assessment after listening to the speech samples. The analysis will consist of conducting multiple regression analyses to examine the relations between the evaluations. Acculturative stress is a strong factor when settling in the host culture. Therefore, the results will shed greater insight into how immigrants are perceived based on the linguistic aspects of speech. Furthermore, they might suggest how second-language programs can modify the focus of English teaching, depending on the positive or negative correlational relationship of the socio-emotive dimensions with the linguistic dimensions. Improvement of second-language programs will lessen the experienced acculturative stress.
Poster
Authors & Affiliations
Vivian Wong, Kimberly A. Noels (Psychology Department, University of Alberta)