Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ethnic Differences in Naive Listener Prominence Perception

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation project is to explore how naïve listeners perceive prominence in African American English (AAE) versus European American English (EAE) speech, with a focus on the role that patterns of rhythm and intonation play. Prosody has been named as one of the cues that listeners use to identify the ethnicity of speakers based on voice alone. This research project is an important step toward understanding what linguistic factors are relevant in ethnic profiling. The research has important implications for all social settings where AAE and EAE speakers interact, including educational settings, police-citizen interactions, political and legal discourse, and interactions in the context of employment. For example, previous research has linked ethnic identification of voices with societal issues such as denying housing or employment to minority speakers. Differences in prosody have also been shown to contribute to how AAE speaking children are misinterpreted in the classroom by mainstream American English speaking teachers; insights from this research could thus be used in training teachers about prosodic differences between ethnic varieties, thus improving the quality of education for AAE speaking children in the classroom. African American English has been the source of much public and academic debate and remains among the most studied language varieties in the United States. Much sociolinguistic research has focused on the sound segments and syntactic structure of AAE, but only sporadic research has investigated its prosody, which includes patterns of rhythm and intonation. Prior research has suggested that some varieties of AAE exhibit different prosodic patterns than other varieties of English. This project uses psycholinguistic tasks to investigate how naïve listeners perceive prosodic prominence: words that listeners hear as "highlighted by the speaker" and that stand out from other, non-prominent words. In a series of experiments, listeners representing different social and regional backgrounds will rate the prosodic prominence of words in speech from speakers of both African American and Caucasian ethnicities. The results of this study will help uncover the phonetic cues that listeners use to perceive prosodic prominence and the role that the ethnicity of the speaker and listener plays in such perception.