A Pilot Study on Poles’ Attitudes to Foreign-Accented Polish and Its Users
cytuj
pobierz pliki
RIS BIB ENDNOTEChoose format
RIS BIB ENDNOTEA Pilot Study on Poles’ Attitudes to Foreign-Accented Polish and Its Users
Publication date: 17.06.2014
Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 9 (2014), Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 67 - 87
https://doi.org/10.4467/23005920SPL.14.004.2384Authors
A Pilot Study on Poles’ Attitudes to Foreign-Accented Polish and Its Users
Extensive 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.
Abelin Åsa, Boyd Sally (2000). Voice quality, foreign accent and attitudes to speakers. Proceedings of Fonetik 2000, 21−24.
Anderson-Hsieh Janet, Koehler Kenneth (1988). The effect of foreign accent and speaking rate on native speaker comprehension. Language Learning 38(4), 561−613.
Baker Colin (1992). Attitudes and Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Bryła-Cruz Agnieszka (2013). English, Scottish and Irish listeners’ perception of Polish-accented English. A comparative study. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.
Cargile Aaron Castelan, Giles Howard (1998). Language attitudes toward varieties of English: An American-Japanese context. Journal of Applied Communication Research 26(3), 338−356.
Coupland Nikolas, Bishop Hywel (2007). Ideologised values for British accents. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(1), 74−93.
Dixon John A., Mahoney Berenice (2004). The effects of accent evaluation and evidence on perception of a suspect’s guilt and criminality. Journal of Social Psychology 144(1), 63−74.
Fayer Joan M., Krasinski Emily (1987). Native and non-native judgements of intelligibility and irritation. Language Learning 37(3), 313−326.
Flege James Emil, Fletcher Kathryn L. (1992). Talker and listener effects on degree of perceived foreign accent. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91(1), 370−389.
Kalin Rudolf, Rayko Donald S. (1978). Discrimination in evaluative judgements against foreign-accented job candidates. Psychological Reports 43, 1203−1209.
Lambert Wallace E. (1967). A social psychology of bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues 23(2), 91−109.
Lev-Ari Shiri, Keysar Boaz (2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46(6), 1093−1096.
Lindemann Stephanie (2002). Listening with an attitude: A model of native-speaker comprehension of non-native speakers in the United States. Language in Society 31(3), 419−441.
Lindemann Stephanie (2010). Who’s “unintelligible”? The perceiver’s role. Issues in Applied Linguistics 18(2), 223−232.
Lippi-Green Rosina (1997). English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge.
Moyer Alene (2013). Foreign Accent. The Phenomenon of Non-Native Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Munro Murray J. (2003). A primer on accent discrimination in the Canadian context. TESL Canada Journal 20(2), 38−51.
Munro Murray J., Derwing Tracey M. (1995a). Processing time, accent, and comprehensibility in the perception of native and foreign-accented speech. Language and Speech 38(3), 289–306.
Munro Murray J., Derwing Tracey M. (1995b). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning 45(1), 73−97.
Munro Murray J., Derwing Tracey M., Sato Kyoko (2006). Salient accents, covert attitudes: Consciousness-raising for pre-service second language teachers. Prospect 21(1) 67−79.
Said Selim Ben (2006). Attitudes towards Accented Speech: A Comparative Study of Native and Non-Native Speakers of American English. MA thesis: Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Swan Oscar E. (2005). First-Year Polish. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh.
Szpyra-Kozłowska Jolanta (2013). Czesze sze bardzo. Polszczyzna z obcym akcentem i jej percepcja. In Język. Człowiek. Społeczeństwo, Jolanta Panasiuk, Tomasz Woźniak (eds.), 253–268. Lublin: Wydawnictwo UMCS.
Szpyra-Kozłowska Jolanta, Radomski Marek (2012). The perception of foreign-accented Polish – a pilot study. Research in Language 10(1), 97−110.
Information: Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 9 (2014), Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 67 - 87
Article type: Original article
Titles:
A Pilot Study on Poles’ Attitudes to Foreign-Accented Polish and Its Users
Maria Curie Skłodowska University, Plac Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie 5, Lublin, Poland
Maria Curie Skłodowska University, Plac Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie 5, Lublin, Poland
Published at: 17.06.2014
Article status: Open
Licence: None
Percentage share of authors:
Article corrections:
-Publication languages:
EnglishView count: 2795
Number of downloads: 1866