Accent Perception

The aim of the experiment is to see if people make stereotypical judgements of other people based upon their accents. Various studies prior to this one have looked into this area of research for example, Strongman and Woosley (1967). They recorded two people reading out a passage, firstly in a Yorkshire accent and then again in a London accent so it actually sounded like four different people when in actual fact there were only two. 110 subjects took part in the experiment and were split into two groups (one group was from the north of England, the other from the south).

They were asked to rate the speakers on various personality traits.

They did this by way of a questionnaire; they rated the traits on a five-point scale and were asked to rate traits such as generous/mean, good looking/unattractive, intelligent/dull etc, there were eighteen pairs of traits in total. The results showed that one accent was not particularly favoured more than the other one but both groups held the same stereotyped attitude about the two accents for e.

g. the London accent was found to be more self confident and the Yorkshire accent was found to be more honest and reliable. A slightly more recent study by Giles (1970) looked at Received Pronunciation, South Welsh and Somerset accents.

Accent Perception

These three examples each carried different status, RP having the highest status and Somerset having the lowest; Giles suggested that this same pattern would emerge when looking at personality traits. His study was rated on a seven point scale, where the subjects would rate the recordings played to them.

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The subjects themselves either had a South Welsh accent or a Somerset accent, the results showed that as suggested the RP accent was favoured more than the regional accents, but the regional accents were not favoured one more than the other, just on different traits for e. g. Somerset were shown to be good natured ness.

This study looks at Received Pronunciation (RP) and Yorkshire accents. There are two hypothesis that will be tested; hypothesis 1: The speaker with the Received Pronunciation accent will receive a significantly higher competence rating than the speaker with the Yorkshire accent, and hypothesis 2: The speaker with the Yorkshire accent will receive a significantly higher social attractiveness rating than the speaker with the RP accent.

The null hypothesis 1: There is no difference between competence ratings in the populations from which the samples come (i. e. any difference between sample competence ratings for RP and Yorkshire accents will be down to chance). Null hypothesis 2: there is no difference between social attractiveness ratings in the populations from which the samples come (i. e. any difference between sample social attractiveness ratings for RP and Yorkshire accents will be down to chance). Method Design The experiment used a matched guise technique; this design is used because the same speaker adopted two verbal guises in the form of two accents.

The speaker was a thirty-three year old white woman, who read the passage in the same ‘neutral’ style with both accents. The recording lasted for one-minute and fifty-two seconds and the content was a short article from as Huddersfield community newsletter, this was chosen because it is supposedly a less interesting topic so that the speaker did not develop ‘character’ whilst speaking which could influence the experiment. The independent variable is the rating scores and the dependant variable is which accent the person speaks in. Participants

There were 151 participants in total, 68 of these listened to the RP recorded passage and 83 listened to the Yorkshire recorded passage. The participants were students attending a lecture on a psychology course. Apparatus/Materials The apparatus which were used were the tape recorded voices of the speaker reading the same passage first in the RP accent then in the Yorkshire accent, the tape player and the personality questionnaires (see appendix A). Procedure Once the students were in the room, the following standardised instructions were given: Before the tape recording was played:

“Today you will be taking part in an experiment which investigates the accuracy of everyday assessments of personality. In a moment you will hear a tape recording of a woman reading an article from a community newsletter. After listening to the recording you will be given a personality questionnaire which asks you to rate the speaker on ten personality traits. Does everyone understand? Okay, the tape recording is about to begin. ” After the tape recording was played: “Having listened to the tape recording you should now rate the speaker on the ten personality traits listed on the personality questionnaire.

Please read the written instructions on the questionnaire and do not confer with anybody else whilst completing it. ” Once the questionnaires were all collected in the students were all debriefed as to the real purpose of the experiment. Results From table 1 shown below we can accept hypothesis 1 that RP will have a higher competence score because RP scored 15. 00 and Yorkshire scored 13. 12. (To put the mean numbers into perspective and to further understand just how high/low they are, please see Appendix B).