Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska
Studies in Polish Linguistics, Vol. 9, Issue 2, Volume 9 (2014), pp. 67-87
https://doi.org/10.4467/23005920SPL.14.004.2384Extensive research on native speakers’ attitudes towards foreign accents and their users carried out in immigrant-receiving countries such as, for example, Great Britain, the United States and Australia (e.g. Kalin and Rayko 1978; Lippi-Green 1997; Munro et al. 2006), has allowed specialists to formulate several cross-cultural generalizations concerning the perception and evaluation of accented speech. For instance, according to Lindemann (2002, 2010), the listeners’ attitude towards foreign speakers, shaped by cultural stereotypes and prejudices, plays a crucial role in comprehending accented speech. It is also often claimed (e.g. Said 2006; Lev-Ari and Keysar 2010) that a heavy foreign accent has a negative impact on the listeners’ assessment of speakers’ personality traits, such as credibility, intelligence and competence. Moreover, this negative accent-based social evaluation, as shown by Lippi-Green (1997), might even lead to various kinds of foreign speakers’ discrimination.
Contemporary Poland, where Polish-speaking foreigners are still a relative rarity, constitutes an interesting and yet unexplored ground for testing the universality of claims concerning the relationship between the listeners’ cultural prejudices and their evaluations of foreign speakers’ accents, as well as personality traits. In this paper we report on an empirical study in which 40 Polish university students assessed 11 samples of foreign-accented Polish, both in terms of accent features and personal characteristics ascribed to the speakers, in order to find out whether these judgements are affected by Polish listeners’ attitudes towards the speakers’ cultural background and knowledge of their nationality.
The results of the study indicate that, on the whole, the speakers’ nationality does not significantly affect the participants’ evaluation of foreign speakers’ accent features (i.e. comprehensibility, foreign-accentedness and acceptability). Such relationship can, however, be found in the attribution of personal characteristics to foreign speakers, which, to some extent, is influenced by the information concerning their nationality and listeners’ cultural prejudices.
Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska
Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, Volume 136, Issue 4, 2019, pp. 265-285
https://doi.org/10.4467/20834624SL.19.024.11317In many American films actors and actresses, native speakers of English who impersonate foreign characters, make an attempt to speak English with a foreign accent. The present paper is the first attempt at analyzing imitated Polish-accented English in two well-known Hollywood productions. It examines, compares and assesses the most salient phonetic properties of the accents employed by two American stars: Meryl Streep appearing as Zofia Zawistowska in Sophie’s Choice(1982) and Jessica Chastain playing the role of Antonina Żabińska in The Zookeeper’s Wife (2017). The major goal, however, is to study the perception of the two accents in order to establish whether they can be regarded as cases of genuine Polish-English speech. The analysis is carried out by means of a three-step procedure. First, a list of typical features of a Polish accent in English is established in consultation with several specialists in Polish English pronunciation. Next, both actresses’ accents are examined with regard to these properties. In the third stage their speech and two samples of a genuine Polish-English accent are assessed by a group of 100 participants (66 Polish students and 34 native speakers of English) in a perception study. The obtained results show that M. Streep’s accent is more accurate and contains more features of authentic Polish English than J. Chastain’s, which is reflected in the Polish listeners’ credibility judgements. Nevertheless, native English listeners view the two actresses’ accents as Polish to a similar extent.