Subphonemic Variation and Lexical Processing: Social and Stylistic Factors

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Phonetics
• Sociolinguistics

Background:

• Lexical access can be influenced by different pronunciation variants of the same word.
• The effectiveness of these variants as primes depends on phonological form, style, familiarity, and social prestige.
• This suggests that the mental lexicon encodes multiple phonological variants with varying strengths.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how subphonemic variation is encoded in the lexicon.
• To determine the influence of stylistic and social properties on the encoding of pronunciation variants.

Main Methods:

• A lexical decision task was employed.
• Cross-modal form priming with auditory primes was utilized.
• Priming magnitude was measured in response to different pronunciation variants.

Main Results:

• Priming magnitude was significantly mediated by stylistic and social properties of auditory primes.
• Factors such as speaking style, talker dialect, and duration influenced the degree of priming.
• Phonetically reduced forms and non-prestigious forms showed weaker lexical encoding.

Conclusions:

• The lexicon encodes phonological variants with differing strengths, influenced by social and stylistic factors.
• Canonical forms and those produced in socially prestigious varieties are more robustly encoded.
• Subphonemic variation and social prestige play crucial roles in lexical representation and access.