The sociolinguistics of variety identification and categorisation: free classification of varieties of spoken English amongst non-linguist listeners

Abstract

In addition to the examination of non-linguists' evaluations of different speech varieties, in recent years, sociolinguists and sociophoneticians have afforded greater attention towards the ways in which naïve listeners' perceive, process and encode spoken language variation, including the identification of language varieties as regionally or socially localised forms. The present study attempts to extend understanding of non-linguists' perceptions of linguistic diversity through the investigation of how accurately and consistently UK-born students, resident in the north-east of England, can identify the speaker place of origin of six forms of L1 and L2 English. The results demonstrate that whilst the process of encoding indexical properties to and categorisations of speech stimulus as belonging to a specific language variety is complex, there is a clear tendency amongst informants to initially identify the speech as either native or non-native, most especially through the perception of specific segmental and non-segmental phonological features, before attempting more fine-grained classifications. The findings also point to the recognition of speaker place of origin at different levels of awareness, above and below the level of individual consciousness.

“The people who are out of ‘right’ English”: Japanese university students' social evaluations of English language diversity and the internationalisation of Japanese higher education

“…There also seems a particular need to further investigate the extent to which it is (combinations of) specific segmental features, rather than supra‐segmental, lexical or morpho‐syntactic features which index social evaluations of other forms of English speech and in turn, of other speech communities. Indeed, whilst there exists a great deal of empirical evidence to suggest that listeners do not need to correctly identify speech forms at a conscious level in order to make predicted stereotypical judgements (see Milroy and McClenaghan ; Gluszek and Dovidio ), the inclusion of a variety recognition instrument (McKenzie ) in the design of future language attitude studies may help researchers better understand the precise linguistic cues upon which specific populations base their (mis)identifications upon as well as potentially provide valuable information regarding the extent to which recognition, below or above the level of individual consciousness, influences speaker evaluations (for a more in‐depth discussion see McKenzie , in press 2015). Since a number of participants' qualitative comments described L2 English speech as ‘less rapid’, in future equivalent studies, it would also be worthwhile to investigate whether differences between the speech rates of the samples of English texts employed influenced listener attitudes.…”

UK university students’ folk perceptions of spoken variation in English: the role of explicit and implicit attitudes

“…Nonetheless, they were generally able to classify the speech as non-native English (99.5%, 94.8% and 87.6% respectively). Followup comments detailing their reasons for their choice of speech as L1 or L2 English (see Section 2.2.1) indicated that categorisations tended to be based upon the perceived grammatical and pronunciation errors the speakers made (for a more detailed discussion, see McKenzie 2015). Moreover, a large number of listeners classified the provenance of the Japanese, Chinese and Thai speakers to come from other countries in the Far East and, whilst technically incorrect, points to awareness of the speech more broadly as "East Asian English".…”

The competence and warmth of Thai students’ attitudes towards varieties of English: the effect of gender and perceptions of L1 diversity

“…171.39 syllables/minute. Frequent use of 'please' at the end of the sentence (five instances) (see also McKenzie, 2015). Other noticeable features include /ð/ realised as [d] in word initial position, e.g., in 'the', 'that' and 'there, a lack of phonemic distinction between /l/ and /r/, e.g., in 'right ', 'left' and 'straight' and /d/ realised as [t] in word final position, e.g., in 'side'.…”