Portraying accent stereotyping by second language speakers.

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Second Language Acquisition

Background:

• Accent stereotyping is prevalent, even when speech is intelligible.
• Previous research on second language (L2) accent perception yields conflicting results, particularly among homogenous learner groups.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether Mandarin-speaking advanced English learners exhibit bias by rating L2 learner accents more critically than Standard American English (SAE) accents.
• To explore L2 listeners' beliefs regarding accented speech.

Main Methods:

• A survey was conducted to gauge L2 listeners' attitudes towards accented speech.
• Two experiments involved participants rating audio recordings of L2 learner speech and SAE speech.
• Experiment 2 utilized a detailed word-in-sentence accent rating task for more granular analysis.

Main Results:

• A significant level of perceived L2 accentedness was observed in learner speech, even when intelligibility was high.
• Strongly accented Cantonese passages and specific vowel/consonant errors were rated particularly harshly.
• Results indicate a bias against non-native accents among Mandarin-speaking English learners.

Conclusions:

• The study reveals the presence of 'native-speakerism' and accent stereotypes within the Chinese context.
• Findings have implications for language teaching methodologies and policy development concerning accent bias.