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The Role of Socio-Indexical Information in Regional Accent Perception by Five to Seven Year Old Children

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The Role of Socio-Indexical Information in Regional Accent Perception by Five to Seven Year Old Children The Role of Socio-indexical Information in Regional Accent Perception by Five to Seven Year Old Children by Erica Lynn Beck A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics) in The University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Assistant Professor Carmel O’Shannessy, Chair Professor Marlyse Baptista Professor Susan Gelman Associate Professor Robin Queen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It’s hard to know where to start - there’s such a long list of people without whom this thing would have never been finished. Thank you to my committee members, who have been very generous with their time and advice. I really appreciate the fact that although I was out of sight the last year, I wasn’t out of mind at all. Thank you for being so easy to work with and so very supportive. A special thank-you to Carmel, who read many drafts, and always liberally uses the word “brilliant.” It may be dialect variation, but it certainly is an ego-booster! Thank you to Dr. Samuels, Superintendent of Schools, the Kindergarten teachers and principals at the sites where this study was conducted for allowing me to conduct this study in your schools. I was touched by the large number of families who chose to participate, and how helpful they were. It was an honor to work with you, and I am very proud that I was able to return to my alma mater to finish my formal education where it started! Thank you to my sister-in-law, Jessica Gray, and her friends who kindly agreed to spend an afternoon recording lists of words for the stimuli. For the rest of the stimuli, I owe a debt to my friends Josh and Beth Lindemann and Christopher and Michelle Boyd, as well as my brother and sister-in-law, Brandon and Kim Hall, who donated their voices to this project. I am fortunate to have so many wonderful friends, and to have had such a supportive group of people around me there in Ann Arbor. This has been one of the nicest periods in our lives, and you have all played no small part in that. In no particular order, thank you, thank you, thank you to Jen and Neil Warner, Derek and Mara-Bell Mancini-Lander, Steffi and Kay Wille, Eleni and John Van den Bergh, Ginger and Avi Derrow, Annette Bryson and Vittorio Trionfi, Jen and Linh Ngyuen, Reina Kuroshima, Leslie Elliot, Sara Tang, Nikki Williams, Cathy Wood, Mollie Bogan, Judy Powers, Nancy Hagendorn-Fiedler and Eddie Stephens. Seriously, this would have been over years ago without you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your friendship. ii To my Linguistic Department friends who have made this such an enjoyable journey, and continue to help me out even now: Anna Babel, Kevin McGowan, Susan Lin, Jon Yip, Tridha Chatterjee, Harim Kwon, Stephen Tyndall, Tim Chou, Eric Brown and Joseph Tyler. To my more distant friends, Heather, Tiffany and Nancy, who’ve always been right there, despite never actually being right there, but who were always so outspoken in their support of me. And, perhaps in a dissertation acknowledgement first, thanks to the organizations who have provided wonderful parks to ponder one’s dissertation problems: The University of Michigan Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, Pinckney State Park and the Mount Vernon Regional Park. Not all who wander are lost….they may just be (avoiding) writing a dissertation. Thanks to Dennis Nelson, who never thought it was a bad idea that I leave work to go work on my dissertation. Finishing this would not have been possible otherwise. I am happy to say I now can vacuum the office too. To my parents, Darryl and Maggie Hall, but especially my mother, who not only regularly drove 500 miles for the privilege of babysitting, but spent hours listening to me complain, and who has formatted and re-formatted this document numerous times now. I admit that I am still dependent on you for many things, the least of which is table formatting. To my dear daughters, who not only tolerated only getting half of my attention for a while now, but who also piloted all of my experiments, helped to sort my data and volunteered to read and edit the finished product. Isabel and Anja, I am happy to say I can finally answer your questions: Isabel - No, you don’t have to do a PhD, but it was more fun than you think. Anja - Yes, Mama’s book IS finally long enough. And finally, to my husband James, who encouraged this project from the very beginning, and who has continued to think it was a good idea throughout the process. Aside from being my cheerleader (Sorry! A mascot!), you also did a lot of macro-writing and statistical “proofreading” over the course of it, which saved me a lot of headaches. I’m sure it won’t be the last time. I am looking forward to wherever this crazy idea takes us next. I love you! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ ii LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................viii LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................. ix LIST OF APPENDICES.................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.1. General Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1.2 Adult Social Knowledge of Regional Accents.......................................................... 3 1.3 Exemplar Theory and Adult Perception of Regional Accent................................... 4 1.4 Predictions of Exemplar Theory about Children’s Social and Linguistic Categories, vis-a-vis Regional Accents................................................................ 9 1.5 What Is Known about Children’s Perception of Regional Accents to Date .......... 11 1.5.1 Acoustic Discrimination ................................................................................. 11 1.5.2 How Children Interpret Variation and Accents for Social Meaning .............. 12 1.5.3 Children’s Productions of Regional Varieties ................................................ 13 1.6 Goals of this Dissertation ...................................................................................... 15 1.7 Research Questions and Hypotheses ..................................................................... 18 1.8 Structure of the Dissertation.................................................................................. 19 CHAPTER 2 Subject Demographics and Parent Questionnaire .............................. 21 2.1 Subject Population Context ................................................................................... 21 2.2 Parent Language Questionnaire............................................................................ 22 2.3 Description of the Questionnaire Items and Design.............................................. 22 2.4 Summary of Subject Demographics....................................................................... 24 iv 2.5 Summary of Language Background Data.............................................................. 27 2.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 29 CHAPTER 3 Awareness Task ...................................................................................... 30 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 30 3.2 Background............................................................................................................ 30 3.2.1 Children Know about Regional Variation ...................................................... 32 3.2.2 Children Understand There is a Local Variety of Speech .............................. 33 3.2.3 Children Understand Relative Geographic Location...................................... 33 3.2.4 Factors Influencing Meta-linguistic Awareness of Accent............................. 34 3.3 Methods.................................................................................................................. 34 3.3.1 Stimuli............................................................................................................. 34 3.3.2 Participants...................................................................................................... 36 3.3.3 Procedure ........................................................................................................ 36 3.3.4 Predictions....................................................................................................... 36 3.4 Results ................................................................................................................... 38 3.5 Analyses................................................................................................................. 43 3.6 Discussion.............................................................................................................. 46 3.6.1 Geography and Spatial Concepts .................................................................... 46 3.6.2 Local vs. Non-local speech ............................................................................. 47 3.6.3 Generalizing the Connection Between Location and Regional Accent.......... 49 3.6.4 Theoretical Issues...........................................................................................
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