Social Stereotypes and Accent Perception in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Pei-Yeu Ma, 馬霈瑀
• Other Authors: James Myers
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/99781657621805145434

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言所 === 95 === Abstract This study explores the effect of visually perceived social stereotypes on the perception of the accent in Taiwan. The dominant languages spoken in Taiwan are Mandarin and Southern Min. The official language is Mandarin despite the major ethnic group has the Southern Min group. Due to language contact, there is a variety of Mandarin which is highly influenced by Southern Min called Taiwanese-Mandarin, and it is directly associated to Southern Min ethnic group. In social interaction, outwards appearances take an important role in the formation of social judgment. Non-linguistic factors such age, status, gender, appearance and ethnicity. elicit stereotypes about how a individual ought to talk. Previous studies showed that these stereotypes or biases had effect in English speech perception. We first investigate in Experiment 1 the social factors that could affect language ability judgments by asking the subject to evaluate different pictures. The result showed that high status, good looking people were evaluated as good speakers of Mandarin; low status and bad looking people were associated to have a good ability of Southern Min. Also, pictures of old people were evaluated as having better management of Southern Min than young people. Using the pictures selected in Experiment 1, the matched-guise technique was employed in the next two experiments. Experiment 2 showed that although subjects were hearing the same Mandarin speech, their listening comprehension scores were different when they saw different “speaker”. Subjects who saw the picture of a Southern Min “speakers” obtained lower scores and evaluated the Mandarin they heard to be less standard than the other group who saw the picture of a Mandarin “speaker”. Experiment3 showed that these stereotypical attitudes affected also in the perceptual identification of phonemic boundary between synthesized /t§u/-/tsu/ (主-組) continuum. Subjects who saw the Southern Min picture, identified more /t§u/ sounds than the group of subjects who saw Mandarin picture. This implied that there were a hyper-correction effect in retroflex sounds identification. Overall, stereotypes towards Mandarin and Southern Min influenced the perception of illusory accent in Taiwanese college students, although this effect varied in gender and native language background of the subjects.