Speaker ethnicity and L2 English proficiency influence accentedness judgments by Chinese learners of English

Abstract

Purpose:

This study examines how speaker ethnicity (Chinese vs. White) and L2 English proficiency influence accentedness judgments by Chinese learners of English. Building on previous findings that speaker ethnicity affects accent perception in native English listeners, we tested whether similar effects occur among L2 English learners at different proficiency levels.

Methodology:

We employed a matched-guise paradigm in which Chinese learners of English at different proficiency levels (high vs. low) viewed either a White or Chinese face while listening to English words spoken with Mandarin-Chinese or American accents. They then rated each word’s accentedness on a 5-point scale.

Data and analysis:

Forty native Mandarin-Chinese speakers (with no other Chinese-dialect background) who learned English as an L2 in Chinese schools were recruited and assigned to high and low English proficiency groups (20 per group). Data for 132 target words in minimal pairs were analyzed using cumulative link mixed models.

Findings:

Results showed that Chinese participants with low English proficiency rated English words as less accented when paired with White faces than with Chinese faces. High-proficiency participants’ ratings were unaffected by speaker ethnicity.

Originality:

While previous studies primarily examined how native listeners’ perception of accentedness is shaped by speaker ethnicity using longer sentences, this study offers a novel perspective by examining nonnative listeners and using smaller linguistic units (i.e., word-level stimuli). It revealed that perceived speaker ethnicity influences accentedness judgments even for isolated words, with a notable interaction with L2 English proficiency.

Significance:

This study underscores the importance of adjusting L2 learners’ evaluation of English accents to foster more inclusive attitudes toward accented speech. In an increasingly globalized world where diverse English varieties coexist, promoting such inclusivity is essential for effective communication and mutual respect across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Keywords

Accentedness speaker ethnicity L2 learners English proficiency nonnative listeners

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Babel

Senior

Bishop

(2019). Do social preferences matter in lexical retuning? Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 10(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.133

Barrios

Hayes-Harb

(2021). L2 processing of words containing English/æ/-/ɛ/and/l/-/ɹ/contrasts, and the uses and limits of the auditory lexical decision task for understanding the locus of difficulty. Frontiers in Communication, 6, Article 689470. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.689470

Bent

Bradlow

A. R.

(2003). The interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114, 1600–1610. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1603234

Boersma

Weenink

(2020). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/download_win.html

Bruner

J. S.

(1958). Social psychology and perception. In Maccoby

E. E.

Newcomb

T. M.

Hartley

E. L.

(Eds.), Readings in social psychology (3rd ed., pp. 85–94). Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Christensen

R. H. B.

(2022). Ordinal: Regression models for ordinal data. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=ordinal

DeShields

O. W.

Jr Kara

Kaynak

(1996). Source effects in purchase decisions: The impact of physical attractiveness and accent of salesperson. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 13(1), 89–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-8116(95)00036-4

Devos

Banaji

M. R.

(2005). American = White? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(3), 447–466. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.3.447

Dovidio

J. F.

Gaertner

S. L.

(1993). Stereotypes and evaluative intergroup bias. In Mackie

D. M.

Hamilton

D. L.

(Eds.), Affect, cognition, and stereotyping (pp. 167–193). Academic Press.

10.

Eger

N. A.

Reinisch

(2019). The role of acoustic cues and listener proficiency in the perception of accent in nonnative sounds. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41(1), 179–200. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263117000377

11.

Flege

J. E.

(1984). The detection of French accent by American listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 76(3), 692–707. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.391256

12.

Flege

J. E.

(2003). Assessing constraints on second-language segmental production and perception. In Schiller

Meyer

(Eds.), Phonetics and phonology in language comprehension and production: Differences and similarities (pp. 319–358). Mouton de Gruyter.

13.

Flege

J. E.

Bohn

O. S.

Jang

(1997). Effects of experience on nonnative speakers’ production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics, 25(4), 437–470. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1997.0052

14.

Flores

Rosa

(2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149–171. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.149

15.

Hanulíková

(2021). Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups. PLOS ONE, 16(10), Article e0259230. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259230

16.

Harding

(2012). Accent, listening assessment and the potential for a shared-L1 advantage: A DIF perspective. Language Testing, 29(2), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532211421161

17.

Hayes-Harb

Smith

B. L.

Bent

Bradlow

A. R.

(2008). The interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit for native speakers of Mandarin: Production and perception of English word-final voicing contrasts. Journal of Phonetics, 36, 664–679. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2008.04.002

18.

Hendriks

van Meurs

Hogervorst

(2016). Effects of degree of accentedness in lecturers’ Dutch–English pronunciation on Dutch students’ attitudes and perceptions of comprehensibility. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1075/dujal.5.1.01hen

19.

Hendriks

van Meurs

Usmany

(2021). The effects of lecturers’ nonnative accent strength in English on intelligibility and attitudinal evaluations by native and nonnative English students. Language Teaching Research, 27, 1378–1407. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168820983145

20.

Hendriks

B. F.

van Meurs Reimer

A.-K.

(2018). The evaluation of lecturers’ nonnative-accented English: Dutch and German students’ evaluations of different degrees of Dutch-accented and German-accented English of lecturers in higher education. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 34, 28–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.03.001

21.

Kang

Moran

Ahn

Park

(2020). Proficiency as a mediating variable of intelligibility for different varieties of accents. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42, 471–487. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263119000536

22.

Kang

Rubin

D. L.

(2009). Reverse linguistic stereotyping: Measuring the effect of listener expectations on speech evaluation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28, 441–456. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09341950

23.

Kawase

Hannah

Wang

(2014). The influence of visual speech information on the intelligibility of English consonants produced by nonnative speakers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 136(3), 1352–1362. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4892770

24.

Kinzler

K. D.

Dupoux

Spelke

E. S.

(2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 12577–12580. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705345104

25.

Kutlu

(2020). Now You See Me, Now You Mishear Me: Raciolinguistic accounts of speech perception in different English varieties. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 44, 511–525. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1835929

26.

Kutlu

Tiv

Wulff

Titone

(2022). The impact of race on speech perception and accentedness judgements in racially diverse and non-diverse groups. Applied Linguistics, 43(5), 867–890. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amab072

27.

Lippi-Green

(1997). Language with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Routledge.

28.

Major

R. C.

Fitzmaurice

S. F.

Bunta

Balasubramanian

(2002). The effects of nonnative accents on listening comprehension: Implications for ESL assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 36(2), 173–190. https://doi.org/10.2307/3588329

29.

McDonough

Trofimovich

Tekin

Sato

(2022). Exploring linguistic stereotyping of international students at a Canadian university. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 45, 3632–3647. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2022.2115049

30.

McGowan

K. B.

(2015). Social expectation improves speech perception in noise. Language and Speech, 58, 502–521. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830914565191

31.

Munro

M. J.

Derwing

T. M.

(1995). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 45(1), 73–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00963.x

32.

Paladino

M. P.

Mazzurega

(2019). One of us: On the role of accent and race in real-time in-group categorization. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 39(1), 22–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X19884090

33.

Perrachione

T. K.

Chiao

J. Y.

Wong

P. C. M.

(2010). Asymmetric cultural effects on perceptual expertise underlie an own-race bias for voices. Cognition, 114(1), 42–55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.08.012

34.

Perrett

D. I.

Lee

Penton-Voak

Burt

D. M.

Rowland

Yoshikawa

Burt

D. M.

Henzi

S. P.

Castles

D. L.

Akamatsu

(1998). Sexual dimorphism and facial attractiveness. Nature, 394, 884–886. https://doi.org/10.1038/29772

35.

Porcheron

Mauger

Soppelsa

Liu

Pascalis

Russell

Morizot

(2017). Facial contrast is a cross-cultural cue for perceiving age. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 1208. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01208

36.

Ramjattan

V. A.

(2019). Raciolinguistics and the aesthetic labourer. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(5), 726–738. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022185618792990

37.

R Core Team. (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/

38.

Rubin

D. L.

(1992). Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of nonnative English speaking teaching assistants. Research in Higher Education, 33, 511–531. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00973770

39.

Sheng

Liu

Zhou

Han

(2013). Oxytocin modulates the racial bias in neural responses to others’ suffering. Biological Psychology, 92(2), 380–386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.11.018

40.

Shin

S.-Y.

Lee

Lidster

(2021). Examining the effects of different English speech varieties on an L2 academic listening comprehension test at the item level. Language Testing, 38(4), 580–601. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265532220985432

41.

Tauroza

Luk

(1997). Accent and second language listening comprehension. RELC Journal, 28(1), 54–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/003368829702800104

42.

Xie

Myers

E. B.

(2017). Learning a talker or learning an accent: Acoustic similarity constrains generalization of foreign accent adaptation to new talkers. Journal of Memory and Language, 97, 30–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2017.07.005

43.

Xie

Theodore

R. M.

Myers

E. B.

(2017). More than a boundary shift: Perceptual adaptation to foreign-accented speech reshapes the internal structure of phonetic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(1), 206–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000285

44.

Phelps

J. E.

Smiljanic

Chandrasekaran

(2013). Reduced efficiency of audiovisual integration for nonnative speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134, EL387–EL393. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4822320