CfP Theme Session SLE2014 The Perception of Non-Native Varieties. Methods and Findings in Perceptual Dialectology

[GITTE KRISTIANSEN]

*Call for Papers for a Theme Session*

47th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea

September 11-14 2014

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland



*The Perception of Non-Native Varieties: Methods and Findings in Perceptual
Dialectology*

Submission deadline: November 20, 2013



*Convenors*

Gitte Kristiansen (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): gkristia at ucm.es

Marinel Gerritsen (Radboud University Nijmegen) :m.gerritsen at let.ru.nl

Dirk Geeraerts (K.U. Leuven) : dirk.geeraerts at arts.kuleuven.be


<dirk.geeraerts at arts.kuleuven.be>

*Description*

We know from previous research that L1 recognition is surprisingly
*fast*(Purnell et al. 1999), surprisingly
*accurate* (Van Bezooijen and Gooskens 1999) and that it is an
*early*acquisition, which evolves
*gradually* and *experientially* (Kristiansen 2010). Listeners thus
gradually construct mental representations to identify native varieties and
foreign languages.


At the same time, linguistic varieties trigger attitudinal reactions.
Accents are socially diagnostic and serve as effective cognitive shortcuts
to identification (where is this speaker from?) and characterization (what
is this speaker like?). In more technical terms, accents are socially
diagnostic because linguistic stereotypes, i.e. sets of abstract linguistic
schemata composed of a cluster of salient features, gradually emerge to
capture the essence of what a group speaks like. In this sense of the
words, social and linguistic stereotypes, rather than distorted images,
constitute useful cognitive reference points that emerge to allow us to
navigate fast and efficiently in a complex social world.


Ever since Lambert et al. (1960) published their pioneering article on
speech evaluation methods, numerous studies have investigated the
(conscious or unconscious) attitudes triggered by L1 varieties (e.g.
Chambers and Trudgill  1998, Preston 2011, Grondelaers and van Hout 2010,
Kristiansen 2010). Numerous studies thus exist on L1 perception, but L2
identification and characterization is still severely understudied.  Given
the role of English as a Lingua Franca in an increasingly globalised world,
focus in this theme session is on the (attitudinal and identificational)
perception of non-native accents of English. At the same time, given the
empirical nature of the theoretical questions that we address, the scope is
by no means limited to situations in which (a variety of) English
constitutes the L2 language. This theme session welcomes proposals that
address issues related to the study of the perception of non-native
varieties such as the following:


*Research questions*

Which are the most novel and efficient ways of controlling speaker-related
characteristics?

How do we best keep voice quality, speech rate and clarity and other
factors under control?

How do we measure and keep speaker´s L1 variety constant while measuring L2
performances?


Which are the current intricacies of speech-related factors and what are
the methodological challenges?

How do we best measure levels of L1 and L2 accentedness and against which
standards? How can the (regional) distances of L1 and L2 accentedness be
objectively measured?

How do we keep speaker-related factors apart from speech-related factors?

In attitudinal research, to what extent are the attitudes measured related
to the speaker, to the social group related to the speaker, or to the L1
accent or the L2 accent of the speaker? How can regional aspects of L1 and
L2 accents be kept under control from the point of view of attitudinal
research?


 How can we best tease apart the numerous mixed effects of the multiple
variables involved in the scenario of L2 and L1 accentedness?

>>From the point of view of advanced corpus-based techniques, to what extent
can multifactorial analyses help control the numerous variables involved?

Ingenious methods have been developed in the past to deal with the
identification and attitudes of native perceptions. Which new methods are
being developed to deal specifically with non-native dimensions?


*Abstract submission*

Submit a short abstract (max. 300 words including references) in doc or
docx format to the convenors before November 20 2013. Briefly indicate the
relevant research question(s) addressed and describe the proposed
methodology in detail.

Acceptance to the theme session will be notified by November 25, 2013

Full versions of accepted abstracts (500 words + references) must be
submitted to SLE before January 15, 2014. Notification of acceptance to
SLE: March 31, 2014.





*References *

Berthele, Raphael (2012) Multiple languages and multiple methods:
Qualitative and quantitative ways of tapping into the multilingual
repertoire. *Methods in Contemporary Linguistics* 195-218.

Chambers, Jack, K. and Peter Trudgill (1998) *Dialectology*. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Grondelaers, Stefan and Roeland van Hout (2010). Do speech evaluation
scales in a speaker evaluation experiment trigger conscious or unconscious
attitudes? University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics vol. 16
(2): 12. Selected paper from New Ways of Analysing Variation 38.


Kristiansen, Gitte (2010) Lectal acquisition and linguistic stereotype
formation. In Dirk Geeraerts, Gitte Kristiansen and Yves Peirsman (eds.)
Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics, 225-263. Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.


 Kristiansen, Gitte (2003) How to do things with allophones: Linguistic
stereotypes as cognitive reference points in social cognition. In René
Dirven, Roslyn M. Frank and Martin Pütz (eds.) *Cognitive Models in
Language and Thought*, 69-120. CLR 24. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.


Kristiansen, Tore (2010) Conscious and subconscious attitudes towards
English influence in the Nordic countries: evidence for two levels of
language ideology. *International Journal of the Sociology of *Language
204: 59–95.


Lambert, Wallace E., Richard C. Hodgson, Robert C. Gardner and Stanley
Fillenbaum (1960) Evaluative reactions to spoken languages. *Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology* 66: 44-51.


Nejjari, W., Gerritsen, M., Haagen. M. van der, & Korzilius, H.
(2012). Responses
to Dutch-accented English. *World Englishes 31, 2: 248-268.*


Preston, Dennis (2011) The power of language regard – discrimination,
classification, comprehension and production. *Dialectologia*. Special
Issue, ed. by John Nerbonne, Stefan Grondelaers and Dirk Speelman.


Purnell, Thomas, William J. Idsardi and John Baugh (1999) Perceptual and
phonetic experiments on American English dialect identification. *Journal
of Language and Social Psychology* 18: 10-30.

Speelman, Dirk, Adriaan Spruyt, Leen Impe and Dirk Geeraerts (2013). Language
attitudes revisited. Auditory affective priming. *Journal of Pragmatics*  52:
83-92.

Van Bezooijen, Renée and Charlotte Gooskens (1999) Identification of
language varieties. The contribution of different linguistic levels. *Journal
of Language and Social Psychology* 18 (1): 31-48.

Watson, Kevin and Clark, Lynn (2011) Capturing listeners' real-time
reactions to local and supralocal linguistic features*. *Chester, UK:
Variation
and Language Processing Conference, 11-13 Apr 2011.