Reference Data:
Lee, B. J. & Bailey, J. L. (2022). Effects of perceived race on comprehensibility, intelligibility, and accentedness ratings. In P. Ferguson, & R. Derrah (Eds.), Reflections and new perspectives. JALT. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTPCP2021-29
Reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS) is the phenomenon whereby listeners’ speech perception is altered by information (or assumptions) about a speaker (e.g., gender, age, social class, ethnicity, nationality). However, while listeners tend to downwardly appraise speakers’ accents and comprehensibility when they perceive them to be of a different language community, past research has generally relied solely on Likert scale data. The current study suggests that qualitative investigation is also necessary to validly interpret raters’ responses. After collecting ratings of accentedness, comprehensibility, language proficiency, and intelligibility from 223 Japanese university students listening to a Japanese speech under a matched-guise, students reported what factors influenced their ratings. Listeners rated the speech of the Caucasian guise as significantly more accented. A key finding was that while comprehensibility ratings were equal, they were qualitatively different. Caucasian guise members cited pronunciation significantly more than the Asian-guise group, who reported grammatical and lexical factors as informing their rating decisions.
逆言語的ステレオタイプ（RLS）とは、話者に関する情報（性別、年齢、社会階級、民族、国籍など）により、聞き手の音声知覚が変化する現象のことである。過去の研究によると、聞き手が異なる言語コミュニティの話者と認識した場合、話者のアクセントや理解力を低く評価する傾向がある。本研究では、評価者の回答を的確に解釈するためには、リッカート尺度法に加えて質的な調査も必要であると考え、matched-guise techniqueを用いて、223名の日本人大学生が日本語のスピーチを聞き、アクセント、理解度、言語能力と明瞭度の評価を集めた後、どのような要因が評価に影響を与えたかを調査した。結果からみると、白人系の話し手はとりわけアクセントが強いと評価され、アジア系の話し手は文法的、語彙的な要因で低い理解度に繋がったという質的な違いがあることが分かった。
