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Of mouths and men: non‐native listeners’ identification and evaluation of varieties of English
Author(s) -
Jarvella Robert J.,
Bang Eva,
Jakobsen Arnt Lykke,
Mees Inger M.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/1473-4192.00003
Subject(s) - attractiveness , psychology , reading aloud , utterance , danish , linguistics , read aloud , reading (process) , psychoanalysis , philosophy
Advanced Danish students of English as a foreign language tried to identify the national origin of young men from Ireland, Scotland, England and the USA from their speech and rated the speech for attractiveness. Two male speakers from each country were heard reading lists of words aloud (Experiment 1) and making utterances that could be used to say hello to someone, thank them,swear at them, or say good‐bye (Experiment 2). In both studies, listeners succeeded about three‐fourths of the time in recognizing a speaker's country of origin. Listeners were more accurate in identifying speakers from England and from the USA, but identi ?ability also varied between speakers from the same country. Listeners rated speech produced by Englishmen as most attractive and the speech of Americans as least so. Rated attractiveness also varied with the speaker and the kind of utterance produced.