Perceptual dialectology in northern England: Accent recognition, geographical proximity and cultural prominence

Abstract

Work in perceptual dialectology has argued that listeners’ successful identification of accent areas is facilitated by their geographical proximity to a particular region. Montgomery (, ) argues that this proximity effect is mediated by a ‘cultural prominence’ effect, where localities of high cultural salience seem less distant. We explore these claims using an online survey in which listeners were asked to identify the regional origin of speakers of five accents from England's ‘linguistic north’ (Liverpool, Manchester, Crewe, Stoke‐on‐Trent and Macclesfield) from audio clips of four different sentences. We show that the proximity and cultural prominence effects are partially supported, and that the proximity effect is driven by listeners’ likely contact with/experience of the dialect in question. We also show that listeners react differently to different sentences in the same accent. While some sentences are identified correctly very often, others, even for culturally prominent locations with distinctive accents (i.e. Liverpool), are hardly ever correctly identified. We connect this to the geographical distribution of the linguistic features in the clips, and we argue that the presence, absence and range of individual linguistic features should be systematically considered in all perceptual dialectology work which uses audio stimuli.

The impact of British accents on perceptions of eyewitness statements

“…Alternately, it could be familiarity with the Birmingham accent, for example through increased mobility, the fact that London and Birmingham are not that far apart, that the British are not unfamiliar with regional accents within the country or through the variety of accents heard on television shows. As Leach, Watson and Gnevsheva (2016) note, there is less feeling of distance for those people who speak with accents that are commonly heard, for example on television. Some politicians (e.g.…”

Intonational variation and incrementality in listener judgments of ethnicity

“…The benefit of using spontaneous stimuli is that it more closely models real-world perception conditions, as listeners perceive spontaneous and read speech (including oratory) differently (Campbell-Kibler, 2009;Holliday & Jaggers, 2015). The drawback is that the distribution of H* versus L+H* pitch accents across stimuli prevented us from addressing Podesva's (2011) hypothesis about categorial salience; at the same time, total experimental control over stimuli is impossible to obtain, as features co-occurring in the stimuli can always shape interpretation of features of interest (Leach, Watson, & Gnevsheva, 2016), including propositional content (Campbell-Kibler, 2009). (We explore this issue further in a post hoc analysis of L+H* phrases.…”

“…That is, for some stimuli smaller differences in intonation were sufficient to trigger higher listener ratings of blackness; for others listener ratings of blackness only increased with larger differences in intonation. Thus, just as context shapes the social meaning of a variant's presence or absence (Campbell-Kibler, 2009;Gumperz, 1982;Leach et al, 2016;Pharao, Maegaard, Møller, & Kristiansen, 2014), context also shapes the way that phonetic detail affects social meanings.…”

Emerging from below the social radar: Incipient evaluation in the North West of England

“… The passages contained a number of instances in which the speaker exhibited other northern features, such as the lack of distinction between the foot ‐ strut and trap ‐ bath lexical sets in words such as young and after , respectively. Other than these supra‐regional features, there was an avoidance of non‐standard forms such as vowel monophthongisation, post‐vocalic /ɹ/, fronted /θ, ð/, or dropped /h/, in order to ensure listeners were not distracted by clustering of other regional or ‘informal’ features (Leach, Watson, and Gnevsheva ). …”

“…and TRAP-BATH lexical sets in words such as young and after, respectively. Other than these supra-regional features, there was an avoidance of non-standard forms such as vowel monophthongisation, post-vocalic /ɹ/, fronted /h, ð/, or dropped /h/, in order to ensure listeners were not distracted by clustering of other regional or 'informal' features (Leach, Watson, and Gnevsheva 2016). 3.…”