This week's readings centered on unconscious bias, and all the unexpected ways that we pay attention to phonetic details of speech. The TICS article presented a summary of current research, focusing on what details of the talker can affect the speech's perception by the listener. There is substantial evidence that social biases come into play, as perceptions of prestigious accents vs. less prestigious accents can affect meaning. In addition, gender also has a substantial effect.
The other readings (I read the King & Sumner and the Sumner & Kataoka papers) also spoke to effects of linguistic priming. The Sumner/Kataoka study in particular looked at speakers with different accents, and how this affected semantic priming and recall rates. Indeed, the different perceptions of these accents had a significant effect. The Southern Standard British English accent, perceived as more prestigious, induced "strong semantic priming and low false recall rates" (Sumner & Kataoka 1).
Linguistic research is just beginning to shed light on all the unexpected ways in which we derive meaning from seemingly unrelated contextual details. Not only do these contextual details inform the semantic meaning (e.g. what the speaker is talking about) but they also affect how we receive the speech, in terms of effects like perceived trustworthiness and recall rates. Only by continuing to become aware of these subtle ways in which language affects us can we begin to change them, although it is discouraging how early these biases seem to set in. Nonetheless, it is really interesting on a more personal level to have interactions of the type specified in these articles (e.g. with someone who has a New York City accent) and to see if I can notice how my perception of that person changes as a result of the phonetic details -- I hope that by becoming aware of the potential effects, I can better negate them!
I also found it interesting to see that perceptions influence how we derive meaning from speech. I think it would be interesting to try and determine exactly how we develop these biases - whether they develop as children, teens, or adults. It would be interesting to see what exactly causes these biases which act so quickly in language processing, and see how circumstances changes these biases, which are not as simple as they might seem.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of becoming more aware of these biases. I also wonder if we primed a group to know about these biases if they would still have lower recall rates and perceived trustworthiness. It is also interesting to me how possibly different ages, genders, and cultures may have different biases as well.
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking about whether if people were primed, you could negate these effects! My initial thinking is probably not very meaningfully - I might respond to one particular accent differently, but I feel like unless it was spelt out to me precisely how I'd respond to all these different accents, I wouldn't change my reaction to all of them.
ReplyDeleteThis actually hints at a larger question I was thinking about - if there are tradeoffs involved between one language. Does my becoming acclimatised to General American English mean I respond less favorably to British English?