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- Title
Portraying accent stereotyping by second language speakers.
- Authors
Lan, Yizhou; Xie, Tongtong; Lee, Albert
- Abstract
Stereotyping towards the second language accent of second language learners is extensively seen even when the content of learner speech can be understood. Previous studies reported conflicting results on accent perception by speakers of second languages, especially among homogenous learners. In this paper, we conducted a survey and two experiments to test whether Mandarin-speaking advanced learners of English may give harsher accent ratings to their fellow learners than to Standard American English speakers. The survey was designed to understand the L2 listeners' beliefs about accented speech. In Experiment 1, participants rated short audio recordings of L2 learner' and Standard American English speech; in Experiment 2, they did the same in a more detailed word-in-sentence accent rating task. Results showed a markedly high level of perceived L2 accentedness for several learner speech stimuli despite good intelligibility, especially for the strongly-accented Cantonese passage and for specific vowel and consonant types. The findings reveal the existence of native-speakerism in China and highlight existing accent stereotypes. Implications for policymaking and language teaching are discussed.
- Subjects
CHINA; STRESS (Linguistics); AMERICAN English language; SPEECH; STEREOTYPES; ENGLISH language usage
- Publication
PLoS ONE, 2023, Vol 17, Issue 6, p1
- ISSN
1932-6203
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0287172