Effects of prestige on accentual convergence in shadowing tasks.

• Main Author: Fu, Kai Li.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/54971
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Accents carry social biases, which may affect language attitudes towards a certain culture or community. Research has shown that speech convergence or imitation is socially-mediated, both implicitly and explicitly. Hence language attitudes may influence the extent of imitation towards a stimulus. Singapore is unique as it straddles both Eastern and Western values, despite being an Asian nation. This paper aimed to examine the effects of different foreign accents, therefore social biases, on patterns of convergence by Singaporeans. The method chosen was vowel measurements of productions in an isolated shadowing task, which exposed subjects to American and mainland Chinese-accented English. Convergence was measured by acoustic distance shifted towards the stimulus. It was found that the American accent yielded higher and stronger imitation as predicted, and Western prestige was proposed as a reason. In comparison, the Chinese accent elicited net divergence despite China’s rising global dominance. This was perhaps due to overt unpopularity of Chinese immigrants in Singapore. Also identified was a possible interaction between the social saliency of a vowel and explicit convergence.