This study describes a series of evaluations of gender pairs of New Zealand English, Australian English, American English and RP-type English English voices by over 400 students in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S.A. Voices were chosen to represent the middle range of each accent, and balanced for paralinguistic features. Twenty-two personality and demographic traits were evaluated by Likert-scale questionnaires. Results indicated that the American female voice was rated most favourably on at least some traits by students of all three nationalities, followed by the American male. For most traits, Australian students generally ranked their own accents in third or fourth place, but New Zealanders put the female NZE voice in the mid-low range of all but solidarityassociated traits. All three groups disliked the NZE male. The RP voices did not receive the higher rankings in power/status variables we expected. The New Zealand evaluations downgrade their own accent vis-a Á-vis the American and to some extent the RP voices. Overall, the American accent seems well on the way to equalling or even replacing RP as the prestige ± or at least preferred ± variety, not only in New Zealand but in Australia and some non-English-speaking nations as well. Preliminary analysis of data from Europe suggests this manifestation of linguistic hegemony as`Pax Americana' seems to be prevalent over more than just the Anglophone nations.As hypothesized, speakers of British English were assigned higher social status than speakers of the respondents' own accent, even though British speech was considered less intelligible and aroused more discomfort. . . . These results underline the prevailing status of British RP throughout the Anglophone world and even in a society that possesses economic and political advantages over Britain internationally. (Stewart, Ryan and Giles 1985: 103) ACCENT EVALUATIONS IN AUSTRALASIA AND THE U.S.A.

Organizational communication covers an eclectic mix of approaches, theories, and methodologies, developed within organizational settings or applied from other areas. The authors start their assessment of recent literature with 6 challenges for the field that have been delineated in previous reviews: (a) to innovate in theory and methodology, (b) to acknowledge the role of ethics, (c) to move from micro-to macrolevel issues, (d) to examine new organizational structures and technologies, (e) to understand the communication of organizational change, and (f) to explore diversity and intergroup aspects of communication. All 6 challenges implicate the importance of considering the intergroup level of analysis as well as the interpersonal and organizational levels, to undertake multilevel research in context, and to consider the role and place of voice in organizations. Finally, researchers must make their research ethical and consequential.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract