The effect of speaker ethnicity and accent on speech processing and speaker evaluation

There is some evidence that people’s beliefs about how someone is ‘supposed to sound’ may affect how they perceive someone’s speech –to the extent of them hearing an accent that isn’t there. This response time study investigates in what ways “expected” and “unexpected” combinations of speaker ethnicity and accent can affect how speech is processed and evaluated. Because these kinds of expectations involving accent are highly culturally- and context-specific, one study was conducted in Vancouver with Japanese and Canadian speakers, while this proposed study will take place in the Netherlands. The reason for this cross-cultural approach is that while Vancouverites generally do not hold strong negative associations with Asian immigrants, Dutch natives DO hold strong negative attitudes toward Moroccan-Dutch immigrants.
For this Dutch replication study, the voices and faces of two white Dutch and two Moroccan-Dutch women will be mixed and matched to create 16 unique ‘speakers’ which together can provide insight into the question whether certain combinations of ethnicity and accent cause a delay in speech processing… To be continued.

Faculty Supervisor:

Murray Munro

Student:

Partner:

Radboud University Nijmegen

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: