SOCIOLINGUISTIC ELEMENTS OF ACCENT PERCEPTION IN AMERICAN AND IRISH ENGLISH

Abstract

This investigation concerns native Irish English accent perception in American English speakers. Previous literature suggests that the amount of exposure to a foreign language or accent affects an individual's ability to accurately perceive an accent other than one's own. For example, a listener who is more familiar with an accent (e.g., has been exposed to it longer and/or more frequently) is likely to more accurately perceive the accent. To investigate these claims, nineteen participants from the University of Arizona listened to eight different audio clips of native Irish English speakers, either from Belfast or Dublin, as many times as they desired. They were asked to score the likelihood that the speaker in the audio clip was a native Irish English speaker (as opposed to a speaker of a different accent, or a speaker attempting to mimic an Irish English accent) on a Likert scale, and to write down qualitative information explaining why they had given that score. All audio clips but one were judged to likely contain an Irish English speaker. Participants tended to give higher Likert scores to audio clips that contained a confident reader who exhibited distinguishing elements of Belfast or Dublin accents.