Article published In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:1 (2012) ► pp.74–93
Listening between the lines
Social assumptions around foreign accents
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 1 January 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.35.1.04fra
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.35.1.04fra
This paper investigates the effect of listener attitudes on the ability to understand a foreign (non-Australian) accent. The research focuses on individual listener characteristics, such as attitude and frequency of contact with accented speakers, rather than speech production. Data was collected through a web-based survey and analysis employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Correlation was found between a negative attitude toward other ethnicities and ability to correctly transcribe foreign-accented speech, with a stronger correlation between a negative attitude and comprehensibility. Qualitative analysis of participant comments highlighted discrepancies in attitude testing methods and indicated that an accent can inspire many assumptions, the most common being that foreign-accented speakers have a lower level of education than Australian-accented speakers. The results suggest that future research in this area should always try to account for individual participant characteristics.
Keywords: comprehensibility, accent, attitudes, listener characteristics, intelligibility
References (24)
Anderson-Hsieh, J., Johnson, R. Koehler, K. (1992). The relationship between native speaker judgments of nonnative pronunciation and deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. Language Learning, 421, 529–555.
Barker, V., Giles, H., Noels, K., Duck, J., Hecht, M. & Clément, R. (2001). The English-only movement: A communication analysis of changing perceptions of language vitality. Journal of Communication, 51(1), 3–37.
Clarke, C. M. (2000). Perceptual adjustment to foreign-accented English. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 1071, 28–56.
Clarke, C. M., & Garrett, M. F. (2002). Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 1161, 3647–3658.
Field, J. (2005). Intelligibility and the listener: the role of lexical stress. TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 399–423.
Flege, J. E. & Fletcher, K. L. (1992). Talker and listener effects on degree of perceived foreign accent. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 91(1), 370–389.
Flege, J. E., Munro, M. J. & MacKay, I. R. (1995). Factors affecting strength of perceived foreign accent in a second language. Journal of Acoustic Society of America, 97(5), 3125–3134.
Gynan. S. N. (1985). Comprehensibility, irritation and error hierarchies. Hispanica, 68(1), 160 – 165.
Fayer, J. & Krasinski, E. (1987). Native and nonnative judgements of intelligibility and irritation. Language Learning, 371, 313–326.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language: New models, new norms, new goals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lindemann, S. (2002). Listening with attitude: A model of native-speaker comprehensibility of nonnative speakers in the United States. Language in Society, 311, 419–441.
(2003). Koreans, Chinese or Indians? Attitudes and ideologies about non-native English speakers in the United States. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(3). 348–364.
McCoy, S., Marks, Jr, P. V., Carr, C. L. & Mbarika, V. (2004, January 5–8). Electronic versus paper surveys: analysis of potential psychometric biases. Paper presented at the 37th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2004 (HICCS’ 04) (p. 80265c). Retrieved October 3, 2006, from [URL].
Morton, S. L., Munro, M. & Derwing, T. M. (2005). The mutual intelligibility of L2 speech. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 281, 111–131.
Mueller, D. J. (1986). Measuring social attitudes: A handbook for researchers and practitioners. New York: Teachers College Press.
Munro, M. J. & Derwing, T. M. (1995a). Processing time, accent, and the comprehensibility in the perception of native and foreign-accented speech. Language and Speech, 38(3), 289–306.
(1995b). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 451, 73–97.
(2008). Segmental acquisition in adult ESL learners: A longitudinal study of vowel production. Language Learning, 581, 479–502.
Pickering, L. (2006). Current research on intelligibility in English as lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 261, 219–233.
Powers, D. E., Schedl, M. A., Leung, S. W. & Butler, F. A. (1999). Validating the revised Test of Spoken English against a criterion of communicative success. Language Testing, 16(4), 399–425.
van Wijngaarden, S., Steeneken, H. & Houtgast, T. (2002). Quantifying the intelligibility of speech in noise for nonnative talkers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1121, 3004–3013.
Cited by (19)
Cited by 19 other publications
Kang, Okim, Maria Kostromitina, Xun Yan, Ron I Thomson & Talia Isaacs
Drożdżowicz, Anna & Yael Peled
Lorenzoni, Anna, Rita Faccio & Eduardo Navarrete
Sbranna, Simona, Simon Wehrle & Martine Grice
2024. A multi-dimensional analysis of backchannels in L1 German, L1 Italian and L2 German. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 15:2 ► pp. 243 ff.
Coumel, Marion, Christine Groß, Sabine Sommer-Lolei & Markus Christiner
Lorenzoni, Anna, Giulia Calignano, Mario Dalmaso & Eduardo Navarrete
Gao, Jie & April Ginther
2022. L2 speaking. In Understanding L2 Proficiency [Bilingual Processing and Acquisition, 13], ► pp. 285 ff.
Lorenzoni, Anna, Elena Pagliarini, Francesco Vespignani & Eduardo Navarrete
Puhacheuskaya, Veranika & Juhani Järvikivi
Puhacheuskaya, Veranika & Juhani Järvikivi
Kim, Hyejeong & Cara Penry Williams
Foucart, Alice, Albert Costa, Luis Morís‐Fernández & Robert J. Hartsuiker
Gibson, Edward, Caitlin Tan, Richard Futrell, Kyle Mahowald, Lars Konieczny, Barbara Hemforth & Evelina Fedorenko
Gill, Chamkaur
Watanabe, Yutai
Colic‐Peisker, Val & Jim Hlavac
Lindemann, Stephanie & Nicholas Subtirelu
Ovalle, Brynne D. & Rahul Chakraborty
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.