Cover not available

Article published In: 25 years of Intelligibility, Comprehensibility and Accentedness
Edited by John M. Levis, Tracey M. Derwing and Murray J. Munro
[Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 6:3] 2020
► pp. 483–504

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Investigating the relationship between comprehensibility and social evaluation

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oregon
 | University of Oregon
Published online: 10 September 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.20022.vau
Abstract
The processing fluency hypothesis proposes that listeners’ perceived difficulty processing the speech of L2 speakers (called comprehensibility/processing fluency) leads them to downgrade those speakers socially. In this paper, we investigate this relationship, focusing on context-specificity. L1-English listeners provided comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings of L1-Korean speakers speaking English, while an orthographic depiction of the speech either appeared alongside the audio or did not, a manipulation aiming to affect comprehensibility. Varying orthography between subjects, Experiment 1 found that orthography resulted in greater comprehensibility, but not more positive social evaluations. Experiment 2 manipulated orthography within subjects, varying context: orthography trials were presented first or last. Comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings were related only when orthography was first, suggesting a conditional, asymmetrical relationship where listeners more readily downgrade than upgrade the same speaker when orthography changes. Our results highlight the context-dependent nature of these constructs, limiting the generalizability of the processing fluency hypothesis.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Social evaluation and comprehensibility/processing fluency
    • 1.2The present study
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Materials and methods
      • 2.1.1Materials
      • 2.1.2Procedure
      • 2.1.3Participants
    • 2.2Results
      • 2.2.1Manipulation check
      • 2.2.2Focal analyses
    • 2.3Discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Materials and methods
      • 3.1.1Materials
      • 3.1.2Procedure
      • 3.1.3Participants
    • 3.2Results
      • 3.2.1Manipulation check
      • 3.2.2Focal analyses
    • 3.3Discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
References
Alter, A. L., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 219–235. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bradlow, A. R. & Alexander, J. A. (2007). Semantic and phonetic enhancements for speech-in-noise recognition by native and non-native listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121(4): 2339–2349. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brennan, E. M. & Brennan, J. S. (1981). Accent scaling and language attitudes: Reactions to Mexican American English Speech, Language and Speech, 24(3), 207–221. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnahan, M. J., Ohashi, R., Nebashi, R., Liu, W. Y., & Shearman, S. M. (2002). Attitudinal and affective response toward accented English. Language and Communication, 22(2), 171–185. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cardoso, A., Levon, E., Sharma, D., Watt, D., & Ye, Y. (2019). Inter-speaker variation and the evaluation of British English accents in employment contexts. In Calhoun, S., Escudero, P., Tabain, M., & Warren, P. (Eds.) Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (1615–1619). Melbourne, Australia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Meo, A., Vitale, M., Pettorino, M. & Martin, P. (2011). Acoustic-perceptual credibility correlates of news reading by native and Chinese speakers of Italian. In W. Lee & E. Zee (Eds.) Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (1366–1369). Hong Kong.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (1997). Accent, intelligibility, and comprehensibility: Evidence from four L1s. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 1–16. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). Putting accent in its place: Rethinking obstacles to communication. Language Teaching, 42(4), 476–490. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dixon, J. A., & Mahoney, B. (2004). The effect of accent evaluation and evidence on a suspect’s perceived guilt and criminality. The Journal of Social Psychology, 144(1), 63–73. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dragojevic, M. (2020). Extending the fluency principle: Factors that increase listeners’ processing fluency positively bias their language attitudes. Communication Monographs, (87)21, 158–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dragojevic, M., & Giles, H. (2014). The reference frame effect: An intergroup perspective on language attitudes. Human Communication Research, 40(1), 91–111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2016). I don’t like you because you’re hard to understand: The role of processing fluency in the language attitudes process. Human Communication Research, 42(3), 396–420. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dragojevic, M., Giles, H., Beck, A. C., & Tatum, N. T. (2017). The fluency principle: Why foreign accent strength negatively biases language attitudes. Communication Monographs, 84(3), 385–405. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giles, H., & Rakić, T. (2014). Language attitudes: Social determinants and consequences of language variation. In T. M. Holtgraves (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Social Psychology, 11–26. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gluszek, A., & Dovidio, J. F. (2010). The way they speak: A social psychological perspective on the stigma of nonnative accents in communication. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 214–237. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hall-Lew, L., Paiva Couceiro, I., & Fairs, A. (2019). Credibility without intelligibility: Implications for hearing vernacular speakers. In R. Blake, & I. Buchstaller (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford (220–230). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hosoda, M., & Stone-Romero, E. (2010). The effects of foreign accents on employment-related decisions. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25(2), 113–132. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hu, G., & Lindemann, S. (2009). Stereotypes of Cantonese English, apparent native/non-native status, and their effect on non-native English speakers’ perception. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 30(3), 253–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ingvalson, E. M., Lansford, K. L., Federova, V., & Fernandez, G. (2017a). Listeners’ attitudes toward accented talkers uniquely predicts accented speech perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141(3), 234–238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ingvalson, E. M., Lansford, K. L., Fedorova, V., & Fernandez, G. (2017b). Cognitive factors as predictors of accented speech perception for younger and older adults. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141(6), 4652–4659. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kang, O., & Rubin, D. L. (2009). Reverse linguistic stereotyping: Measuring the effect of listener expectations on speech evaluation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28(4), 441–456. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, N., & O’Brien, E. (2016). The tipping point of moral change: When do good and bad acts make good and bad actors? Social Cognition, 34(2), 149–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. B. (2017). lmerTest package: tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82(13), 1–26. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(6), 1093–1096. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Less-detailed representation of non-native language: Why non-native speakers’ stories seem more vague. Discourse Processes, 49(7), 523–538. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levis, J. (2018). Intelligibility, oral communication, and the teaching of pronunciation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lick, D. J., & Johnson, K. L. (2015). The interpersonal consequences of processing ease: Fluency as a metacognitive foundation for prejudice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(2), 143–148. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindemann, S. (2003). Koreans, Chinese or Indians? Attitudes and ideologies about non-native English speakers in the United States. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(3), 348–364. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lindemann, S., & Subtirelu, N. (2013). Reliably biased: The role of listener expectation in the perception of second language speech. Language Learning, 63(3), 567–594. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States (2nd ed). London, England: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lüdecke, D. (2018). sjPlot: Data Visualization for Statistics in Social Science. R package version 2.4.1.9000.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGowan, K. B. (2015). Social expectation improves speech perception in noise. Language and Speech, 58(4), 502–521. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McLaughlin, D. J., Baese-Berk, M. M., Bent, T., Borrie, S. A., & Van Engen, K. J. (2018). Coping with adversity: Individual differences in the perception of noisy and accented speech. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 80(6), 1559–1570. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McLaughlin, D. J., & Van Engen, K. J. (2020). Task-evoked pupil response for accurately recognized accented speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(2), 151–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munro, M. J. (2018). Dimensions of pronunciation. In O. Kang, R. Thomson, & J. Murphy (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary English Pronunciation (413–431). New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munro, M. J. & Derwing, T. M. (1995a). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 45(1), 73–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1995b). Processing time, accent, and comprehensibility in the perception of native and foreign-accented speech. Language & Speech, 38(3), 289–306. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nagle, C., Trofimovich, P., & Bergeron, A. (2019). Toward a dynamic view of second language comprehensibility. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41(4), 647–672. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ogden, D. (2019). Processing fluency, perceptual adaptation, and language attitudes: Does adaptation improve comprehension ease and attitudes toward speakers with non-native accents? [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Michigan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryan, E. B., Carranza, M. A. and Moffie, R. W. (1977). Reactions toward varying degrees of accentedness in the speech of Spanish-English bilinguals. Language and Speech, 201, 267–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryan, E. B., Giles, H., & Sebastian, R. J. (1982). An integrative perspective for the study of attitudes toward language variation. In E. B. Ryan & H. Giles (Eds.), Attitudes Towards Language Variation: Social and Applied Contexts (1–19). London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Souza, A. L., & Markman, A. B. (2013). Foreign accent does not influence cognitive judgments. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 35(35) 1360–1365.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sparks, J., & Ledgerwood, A. (2017). When good is stickier than bad: Understanding gain/loss asymmetries in sequential framing effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(8), 1086–1105. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stocker, L. (2017). The Impact of Foreign Accent on Credibility: An Analysis of Cognitive Statement Ratings in a Swiss Context. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 46(3), 617–628. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sumner, M. and Kataoka, R. (2013). Effects of phonetically-cued talker variation on semantic-encoding. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(6), EL485–EL491. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sumner, M., Kim, S. K., King, E., & McGowan, K. B. (2014). The socially-weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(1015) 1–13.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor Reid, K., Trofimovich, P., & O’Brien, M. G. (2019). Social attitudes and speech ratings: Effects of positive and negative bias on multiage listeners’ judgments of second language speech. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41(2), 419–442. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tzeng, C. Y., Alexander, J. E., Sidaras, S. K., Nygaard, L. C. (2016). The role of training structure in perceptual learning of accented speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42(11), 1–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Engen, K. J., Baese-Berk, M. M., Baker, R. E., Choi, A., Kim, M., & Bradlow, A. R. (2010). The Wildcat Corpus of native-and foreign-accented English: Communicative efficiency across conversational dyads with varying language alignment profiles. Language & Speech, 53(4), 510–540. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vaughn, C. (2019). Expectations about the source of a speaker’s accent affect accent adaptation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(5), 3218–3232. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vaughn, C., & Baese-Berk, M. (2019). Effects of talker order on accent ratings. In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain, & P. Warren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Melbourne, Australia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zuengler, J., & Bent, B. (1991). Relative knowledge of content domain: An influence on native-non-native conversations. Applied Linguistics, 12(4), 397–415. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Squizzero, Robert
2025. The Effects of Perceived Ethnicity and Prosodic Accuracy on Intelligibility, Comprehensibility, and Accentedness in L2 Mandarin Chinese. Language and Speech DOI logo
Levis, John M.
2024. Key issues in L2 pronunciation research. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 10:3 ► pp. 293 ff. DOI logo
Kendall, Tyler, Nicolai Pharao, Jane Stuart-Smith & Charlotte Vaughn
2023. Advancements of phonetics in the 21st century: Theoretical issues in sociophonetics. Journal of Phonetics 98 ► pp. 101226 ff. DOI logo
Skowronek, Janto, Alexander Raake, Gunilla H. Berndtsson, Olli S. Rummukainen, Paolino Usai, Simon N. B. Gunkel, Mathias Johanson, Emanuel A. P. Habets, Ludovic Malfait, David Lindero & Alexander Toet
2022. Quality of Experience in Telemeetings and Videoconferencing: A Comprehensive Survey. IEEE Access 10 ► pp. 63885 ff. DOI logo
Trofimovich, Pavel, Oguzhan Tekin & Kim McDonough
2021. Task engagement and comprehensibility in interaction. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 7:3 ► pp. 435 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 13 november 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue