Doctoral Dissertation Research: Integration of Social Information in Sociolinguistic Perception

博士论文研究：社会语言感知中的社会信息整合

• 批准号: 2314440
• 负责人: Annette D'Onofrio
• 金额: $ 1.07万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-15 至 2024-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314440&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Integration; Social

Listeners can form expectations about how a person will speak based on a variety of cues, before that person utters a word. Furthermore, research has shown that those expectations can, in fact, influence how individuals hear and interpret the person when they do speak. However, there are instances where individuals might have multiple, distinct sources of information about a speaker that could lead to conflicting expectations about how that person will sound. This dissertation examines how listeners use cues to a speaker’s race and nationality to inform their expectations about what the speaker sounds like. Minority ethnic groups are often viewed as foreigners regardless of their relationship within their home society. This view can lead to various kinds of discrimination, including penalizing judgements about their proficiency as well as the legitimacy of their identities. By considering an aspect of face-to-face communication in the real world, namely that listeners can have several sources of information about speakers available to them, including visual information, information about a speaker’s nationality, and a speaker’s name, the overall goal of this research is to shed more light on how listeners make sense of these potentially competing sources of information when interpreting and evaluating speech. Focusing on expectations about how minoritized speakers and their speech in particular are viewed may inspire a public audience to reflect about the expectations they hold, consciously or unconsciously, about these speakers.This doctoral dissertation project consists of a series of experiments with two main tasks: a speech-in-noise task in which listeners hear sentences in noisy environments from many “speakers” and are asked to type what they hear, and a social attributes ratings task in which they evaluate the “speakers” on various scales including how foreign accented and clear they believe the speech of the “speakers” were. The experiments differ based on how the “speakers” that listeners encounter are represented; various combinations of photos to cue a speaker as racially minoritized or from a majority ethnic group, written biographies describing a non-immigrant or immigrant national, and written first names to cue a speaker as racially minoritized or not will be used. The accuracy of listeners’ responses from the speech-in-noise task and foreign accentedness and clarity of speech ratings from the social attributes ratings task are analyzed to assess which types of “speakers” are better understood and viewed as having speech that is devoid of foreign accents and as easy to understand. Findings may inform training programs in educational and workplace settings that aim to reduce language discrimination against ethnic minorities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在一个人说出一个词之前，听众可以根据各种线索对这个人将如何说话形成预期。此外，研究表明，这些期望实际上会影响人们在说话时如何倾听和理解对方。然而，在某些情况下，个人可能有多个不同的关于说话者的信息来源，这可能会导致对该人的声音的相互冲突的期望。本论文研究了听者如何利用对说话者种族和国籍的线索来告知他们对说话者声音的期望。少数族裔群体往往被视为外国人，而不管他们在本国社会中的关系如何。这种观点可能导致各种歧视，包括对他们的熟练程度以及他们身份的合法性作出惩罚性的判断。通过考虑在真实的世界中面对面交流的一个方面，即听众可以有几个来源的信息提供给他们，包括视觉信息，信息的扬声器的国籍，和扬声器的名字，本研究的总体目标是阐明更多的听众如何理解这些潜在的竞争信息来源时，解释和评估讲话。关注少数群体演讲者及其演讲如何被看待的预期，可能会激发公众反思他们对这些演讲者的期望，有意识或无意识。本博士论文项目包括一系列实验，主要任务有两个：这是一项噪音中的语音任务，在这项任务中，听众在嘈杂的环境中听到许多“说话者”的句子，并被要求输入他们听到的内容，以及社会属性评级任务，在该任务中，他们在各种尺度上评估“说话者”，包括他们认为“说话者”的讲话的外国口音和清晰程度。实验根据听众遇到的“说话者”的代表方式而有所不同;将使用照片的各种组合来提示说话者是少数族裔或来自多数族裔，描述非移民或移民国民的书面传记，以及书面名字来提示说话者是否属于少数族裔。分析了来自噪声中的语音任务的听众响应的准确性和来自社会属性评级任务的语音评级的外国重音和清晰度，以评估哪种类型的“扬声器”被更好地理解，并被视为具有没有外国口音的语音并且易于理解。调查结果可能会为旨在减少对少数民族语言歧视的教育和工作场所环境中的培训计划提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。