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Article published In:
Journal of Second Language Pronunciation
Vol. 10:1 (2024) ► pp.35–58

Effects of listeners’ dialectal variation on comprehensibility and accentedness judgements of second language speech

ORCID logo | University of Eastern Finland
This study investigated the impact of listeners’ dialectal variations within the same L1 on perceptions of L2 speech comprehensibility and accentedness. Thirty untrained British and American English-L1 raters assessed recorded L2 speech samples from 29 Finnish learners of English and provided scalar judgments for their comprehensibility and accentedness. Four linguistically trained graduate students evaluated the samples for segmental accuracy, speech rate, word stress and intonation. Results of linear mixed models indicated no significant effect of raters’ L1 variety on global comprehensibility and accentedness ratings. While American and British raters relied on same pronunciation features in their comprehensibility judgments, they placed different levels of importance on pronunciation features when making accentedness judgments. Particularly, both groups primarily exhibited sensitivity towards segmental errors in their assessments of accentedness, whereas American raters demonstrated an additional sensitivity to intonation. The findings underscore the complexity of accent perception based on the L1 variety of listeners.
Keywords: comprehensibility, accentedness, second language speech, dialects
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Effects of pronunciation features on listeners’ judgements
    • 1.2Effects of listeners’ language backgrounds on L2 speech evaluation
    • 1.3The present study
  • 2.Materials and methods
    • 2.1Participants
      • 2.1.1Speakers
      • 2.1.2Listeners for global and pronunciation ratings
    • 2.2Elicited Imitation Task (EIT)
    • 2.3Speech materials
    • 2.4Global ratings
    • 2.5Pronunciation ratings
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Global and pronunciation ratings
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Limitations and future directions
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 23 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.23018.gha
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