Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ethnic Differences in Naive Listener Prominence Perception

博士论文研究：天真的听众突出感知的种族差异

• 批准号: 1627042
• 负责人: Tyler Kendall
• 金额: $ 1.03万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1627042&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Ethnic; Differences

The goal of this dissertation project is to explore how naïve listeners perceive prominence in African American English (AAE) versus European American English (EAE) speech, with a focus on the role that patterns of rhythm and intonation play. Prosody has been named as one of the cues that listeners use to identify the ethnicity of speakers based on voice alone. This research project is an important step toward understanding what linguistic factors are relevant in ethnic profiling. The research has important implications for all social settings where AAE and EAE speakers interact, including educational settings, police-citizen interactions, political and legal discourse, and interactions in the context of employment. For example, previous research has linked ethnic identification of voices with societal issues such as denying housing or employment to minority speakers. Differences in prosody have also been shown to contribute to how AAE speaking children are misinterpreted in the classroom by mainstream American English speaking teachers; insights from this research could thus be used in training teachers about prosodic differences between ethnic varieties, thus improving the quality of education for AAE speaking children in the classroom.African American English has been the source of much public and academic debate and remains among the most studied language varieties in the United States. Much sociolinguistic research has focused on the sound segments and syntactic structure of AAE, but only sporadic research has investigated its prosody, which includes patterns of rhythm and intonation. Prior research has suggested that some varieties of AAE exhibit different prosodic patterns than other varieties of English. This project uses psycholinguistic tasks to investigate how naïve listeners perceive prosodic prominence: words that listeners hear as "highlighted by the speaker" and that stand out from other, non-prominent words. In a series of experiments, listeners representing different social and regional backgrounds will rate the prosodic prominence of words in speech from speakers of both African American and Caucasian ethnicities. The results of this study will help uncover the phonetic cues that listeners use to perceive prosodic prominence and the role that the ethnicity of the speaker and listener plays in such perception.

本论文的目的是探索天真的听者如何在非裔美国人英语(AAE)和欧洲美国人英语(EAE)演讲中感知突出，重点关注节奏和语调模式所起的作用。韵律被认为是听众仅凭声音就能识别说话者种族的线索之一。这项研究项目是理解语言因素与种族侧写相关的重要一步。这项研究对AAE和EAE演讲者互动的所有社会环境都有重要影响，包括教育环境、警察与公民的互动、政治和法律话语以及就业背景下的互动。例如，之前的研究将声音的种族认同与社会问题联系在一起，例如拒绝少数族裔说话者的住房或就业。韵律上的差异也被证明是导致说AAE的儿童在课堂上被主流美国英语教师曲解的原因之一；因此，这项研究的见解可以用来培训教师关于种族差异的韵律差异，从而提高AAE儿童在课堂上的教育质量。非洲裔美国人英语一直是公众和学术辩论的来源，并且仍然是美国研究最多的语言变体之一。很多社会语言学研究都集中在AAE的音段和句法结构上，但对它的韵律，包括节奏和语调模式的研究还很零星。先前的研究表明，AAE的某些变体表现出与其他英语变体不同的韵律模式。这个项目使用心理语言学任务来调查天真的听众如何感知韵律突出：听众听到的被说话者突出的单词，从其他不突出的单词中脱颖而出。在一系列实验中，代表不同社会和地区背景的听者将对非裔美国人和白人说话者讲话中单词的韵律突出程度进行评分。这项研究的结果将有助于揭示听者用来感知韵律突显的语音线索，以及说话者和听者的种族在这种感知中所起的作用。