Arabic Accent Perception and Prejudice in the Usa

ARABIC ACCENT PERCEPTION AND PREJUDICE IN THE USA

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics

Greg J. Niedt, B.A.

Washington, D.C. April 26, 2011

ARABIC ACCENT PERCEPTION AND PREJUDICE IN THE USA

Greg J. Niedt, B.A.

Thesis Advisor: Robert J. Podesva, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

This paper reports the results of a study investigating the extent to which native speakers of

American English associate specific personal qualities to native speakers of Arabic based solely on auditory information. 234 participants, recruited through online social networks, heard sound clips of Arabic-accented English and were asked to rate each speaker from 1 to 5 in categories such as ―assertive‖, ―intelligent‖, and ―religious‖. Responses were analyzed to determine which demographic factors, such as sex, race, and political/religious self-identification, were statistically significant. The results were found to be significant for some of the respondent groups, in certain qualities: the paper illustrates which are seen as particularly related to Arabic accent, as opposed to ―non-native‖. The survey results are combined with interviews with native

Arabic speakers on their experiences as speakers of accented English in the USA. The paper attempts to construct a picture of the American language attitudes towards Arabic, highlight stereotypes and prejudices that are drawn out through linguistic interaction, and offer directions for further research beyond this initial study.

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The research and writing of this thesis would not have been possible without the continuous support of my family, friends, and colleagues.

I dedicate the research and writing of this thesis to Bruce and Kathleen Niedt, Angela Carothers, Corinne Seals, Anna Marie Trester, and everyone else who participated in making this a reality.

I also dedicate it to anyone that might be better served from the results presented herein.

My sincerest thanks, Greg J. Niedt

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1 The Arab and Arabic-speaking community in the USA ...... 6 The Study: Qualitative Methodology ...... 10 Qualitative Data ...... 11 The Study: Quantitative Methodology ...... 17 Quantitative Data ...... 21 Analysis ...... 22 Comparing accents for levels of significance ...... 22 Examining particular quality ratings across respondent groups ...... 24 Effects of different subcategories of sound clip ...... 29 Interpreting the data ...... 32 Limitations and Solutions ...... 36 Conclusions ...... 39 Appendix A: Survey ...... 42 Appendix B: Survey versions and order of sound clips ...... 45 Appendix C: Respondent pool broken down by demographic category ...... 46 Appendix D: Demographic factors and factor groups in least-squares regression; graphs of non- statistically significant responses for Arabic accent by demographic group ...... 47 Bibliography ...... 52

Introduction

The question of foreign accent is one of great interest for the purpose of discussing how speakers of one language acclimate to another in terms of both the way those speakers produce the new language, and the way in which their accents are thereby perceived. Furthermore, from mastery of a language comes easier integration into a new society. Dennis R. Preston (2004) points out,

―Language attitudes are a significant part of how we assess one another. Understanding folk attitudes towards ways of speaking contributes to our knowledge of how speech can influence… critically important matters for maintaining equality in a democratic society‖ (480). What are the social and psychological effects of making judgments based on the sound of someone‘s voice?

Does this kind of linguistic gatekeeping prevent speakers with particular variations in their language from getting jobs, finding houses, receiving services?

In the context of mainstream American language ideology (one that emphasizes monolingual English use despite the diverse multiculturalism of the nation), native speakers are often positioned above immigrant or non-native speakers. Stereotypes arise from a priori

―knowledge‖ about various groups, and when a non-native speaker‘s identity is determined through symbols (which can include language), native speakers may place negative assumptions upon that person. With the marked increase of media reporting on the Middle East and the Arab world, and increased visibility of a Muslim minority in the United States, the Arabic-speaking community deserves some attention in this regard. Some of the most severe stereotypes— terrorist, extremist, misogynist—are reserved for members of this community. If language can be linked to a particular group in an American listener‘s mind, are they hearing Arabic-influenced features, and in turn evaluating speakers more negatively than they otherwise would? If so, how and why is this occurring?

There has been extensive research conducted on the processes by which particular features of a native language (or L1) become present in the speaker‘s newly-acquired language

(or L2), and on the phonetic features that constitute this or that accent. However, this study is more concerned with the social perception of accented speakers by the natives of the language they are using. More recent studies (see for example: Major 2010; Rindal 2010; Derwing and

Munro 2009; Ibrahim, Evatar, and Leikin 2008; Rahman 2008) have established the hardship of overcoming the patterns of one‘s original language and the social or psychological pressures this can create for speakers. Al-Issa (2003) discusses the ultimate impossibility—or at least, improbability—of distancing oneself from the social norms of the L1 when attempting to communicate in the L2. He defines the process of carrying over these norms as ―sociocultural transfer‖, and quotes Thomas (1984) in saying this transfer results in ―sociopragmatic failures… the mismatch which arises from cross-culturally different assessments within the social parameters affecting linguistic choice, etc.‖ Similarly, the ways in which people evaluate their own speech and that of others are ―culturally inherited‖ and ―consist of different values, preferred communication styles, expectations, and interpretations‖ (al-Issa 2003: 581). The L2 speaker must undertake a supreme effort to overcome the choices in his or her speech that a native speaker perceives as anomalous.

It is one thing to discuss whether a native speaker of that L2 senses these anomalies phonologically, syntactically, or even idiomatically; but it is quite another to discuss what effect that perception will have on L1 listeners with whom the speaker is interacting. In a multicultural society with an unprecedented level of media involvement in everyday life such as we see in the

United States, we are constantly subject to the opinions of others as they match up with backgrounds, ethnicities, and perhaps even languages. A great deal of linguistic research

(beginning with Labov 1972; see also for example Ochs and Capps 1996; Eckert and Rickford

2001) has been done on how [ethnic] identity is co-constructed in interaction, in a delicate ballet between participants that relies on communicative cues to constantly re-evaluate self and others.

A linguist must concede, though, that the average person may not mediate their evaluative process with this level of metalinguistic awareness, and holds set perceptions about identity in general, particularly ethnicity. Rampton (1995) states that in a given interaction, ethnicity is almost always marked as either neutral (as an in-group feature, where it is a non-issue) or negative (as an intergroup feature, since the difference in speech style is salient). Two complications of this concept are that even within ethnicities, there is plenty of demographic variation that can cause speaker bias; and that there is often a visual component to the perception of ethnicity. This latter point is especially important, as it is a significant factor in creating the idea of ethnicity as an unalterable category which has a direct influence on interaction. ―Because participants are assumed to experience ethnicity as an unchangeable inheritance…ethnicity is liable to lead to a communicative breakdown‖ (Rampton 487). In this paper, I will show that the accents of particular ethnicities can effect reactions in listeners on their own, without other signaling cues.

We can presume that the features of a non-native speaker‘s speech pattern are noticeable and that they lead to discontinuity in communication. If the role of ethnicity in creating this discontinuity means it is given negative value by the native speaker, we should consider how particular languages may be affected. The work of Jane H. Hill on Spanish, especially its use and devalued caricature in the public sphere—what she calls ―Junk Spanish‖ (Hill 1995)—is particularly illuminating in the example of that language. She discusses the role that native speakers‘ language ideologies about their linguistic superiority play in interacting with non-

native speakers (particularly those resident in ―their‖ country), the great chain of association from perceived characteristics of a group that is lower in the majority‘s view to their native language and marked use of the L2, and the means by which ideology does this as a function of

―public‖ and ―private‖ rights by the native speakers. She cites van Dijk (1993) in calling this

―covert racism‖, a discourse ―that protects the positive self-image of the racist and in turn the positive image of whites [in this case] more generally…permit[ting] racist discourse and its negative and exclusionary functioning to proceed‖ (Hill 1995: 199). In order to expose and tear down that ideology where it does exist, we must find a way to make it overt rather than covert.

Anderson (1991) has pointed out that in fact, a nation (and not so far by extension, an ethnicity) is actually an ―imagined‖ community, demonstrating the fallacy of such ideologies in the first place.

Of course, the result of language ideology that appears in everyday interaction is that L2 speakers suffer from value judgments L1 listeners place upon them based on a perceived lack of mastery of the language. Rosina Lippi-Green (2004) states, ―we rely on language traits to judge others. […] Language is – among other things – a flexible and constantly flexing tool for the emblematic marking of social allegiances. […] Speakers choose among sociolinguistic variants available…and their choices cluster together in ways that are obvious and interpretable to other speakers‖ (291). The problem arises when the dominant members of the speech community assign themselves the right to deem particular clusters of those variants (or the speakers associated with them) as less in some way, and perform discriminatory acts as a result. Lippi-

Green frames her chapter with many anecdotes from workplaces, schools, and government offices (including courts) where language was the salient feature that resulted in prejudice.

Researchers have documented many similar instances in the United States (such as Baugh 1999,

an example of his well-known work on linguistic profiling via telephone), while Gluszek and

Dovidio (2010) draw on several social psychology studies to state that ―speaking with an accent can elicit considerable stigmatization‖ (28-29). The majority of these studies note the frequency with which the subjects committing these acts of discrimination are so unaware of what they‘re doing: these kinds of judgments have become so normalized in American society that when quantitative data display the magnitude of the issue, people are shocked that there could be – and that they might contribute to – such a situation (Lippi-Green 292).

There is a wealth of research on these perceptions that has been done for other languages in the United States; the overwhelming majority focuses on Spanish, since the Hispanic population is now the largest (collectively-identified ―ethnic‖) minority in the country. A great deal of work besides Hill‘s has been written for the purpose of identifying and mitigating bias towards Spanish speakers in the classroom (Valdés 2003), workplace (Barrett 2006), and media

(Santa Ana 2009). A number of other papers and studies have also taken place for the other speech communities (including Arabic) in other countries, which often fall into two varieties: small minority communities that are native to the region, or diaspora communities. However, very little work has been done on the status of Arabic speakers in the USA specifically examining how they are regarded based on their language use and accent. My goal in this paper is to address this topic, and attempt to determine how American listeners react to hearing an Arabic accent; what particular qualities do they associate with the accent? Do they immediately make strong character judgments about the speakers? Are these judgments positive or negative in comparison with an American accent, and with another non-native accent?

I will first discuss the status of the community and language as a whole. Afterwards, I present samples from interviews with Arabic speakers who generously shared their stories and

opinions with me about their language use here. These qualitative data are combined with quantitative: an online survey distributed to American native English speakers asking them to make judgments about accented speakers using sound clips. The analysis of these data is then presented, followed by my interpretation of them and a discussion of the study‘s limitations. I conclude with suggestions for how this study, and further research, could be applied.

The Arab and Arabic-speaking community in the USA

The US Census Bureau‘s 2007 American Community Survey (ACS) estimated 767,319 speakers of Arabic in the USA, representing 1.4% of the population who speaks a language other than

English at home. They are the 10th largest language minority in the country, though these figures do not necessarily represent the total number of immigrants who may speak English at home, but have Arabic accents (Shin and Kominski 2010). The ACS from the previous year reports that

1,466,874 foreign-born residents identify as being of Arab ancestry, while according to the Arab

American Institute (AAI), ―at least 3.5 million Americans are of Arab descent.‖ Their website also notes that ―census ancestry data have historically undercounted the Arab American population…by as much as two-thirds‖ (AAI 2011). Although this community is smaller than other well-documented ones (Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc.), and is a far cry from the 40- million-strong Hispanic community, the numbers still justify attention.

Examining bias towards this community has become more important due to the sociopolitical climate which recent history has bred. AAI released a report in October 2001, soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, outlining hundreds of criminal incidents that had targeted Arab-Americans within just one month. (The report also noted that there had been many acts of violence towards members of other religious or ethnic communities

who were perceived as being Muslim or Arab, including Persians, Sikhs, South Asians, and even

Hispanics.) Incidents included assaults, harassment, ―airplane profiling‖ including an Arab

Congressman being banned from a flight, and even murder. The document includes the results of a poll stating that ―45% of students and 37% of Arab Americans of the Muslim faith report being targeted by discrimination since September 11‖, and also bleakly states that such discrimination following acts of terrorism or foreign interventions were something the community had ―come to expect‖ over several decades (Zogby 2-3). Continued involvement in the Middle East, Northern

Africa, and Southwest Asia, along with an ongoing public dialogue about associating Islam with extremism, remains constant in American media.

The presence of Arabs in the USA is nothing new, but with the development of the

Internet and the attention of mass media in reporting world affairs, non-Arab Americans are taking notice of the Arabic language and its speakers in an unprecedented way. Sehlaoui (2009) points out the rapid increase in Arabic schools and university programs in the past decade: from

1998 to 2002, the number of college enrollments in Arabic classes increased by 92 percent, and then from 2002 to 2006, by another 126 percent, effectively quadrupling enrollment in eight years, a higher rate than any other foreign language. He also notes that this sudden expansion has

―brought to light a number of problems associated with Arabic language instruction,‖ namely unqualified instructors and inadequate teaching materials; the development of appropriate language education cannot keep up with the keen interest students are displaying. Furthermore, while Sehlaoui is primarily interested in education for heritage speakers, he speculates on the motivation to learn Arabic for the majority of these non-Arab students: genuine curiosity or a

―know your enemy‖ strategy (Sehlaoui 281-282). Because of this increased visibility and awareness of Arabic and its speakers in the past decade, the community has become more

solidified in the non-Arab American consciousness as a salient ethnic group, with its own stereotypes, conceptions, misconceptions, and associated qualities.

The diglossic situation of colloquial and standard Arabic has resulted in a focus on that interplay within Arabic-majority countries, while studies of Arabic-speaking diaspora communities are much rarer, and almost invariably focus on how the speakers themselves maintain Arabic in these contexts. Authors like Naficy (2003) and Sehlaoui discuss heritage language schooling and mass media, respectively, as tools for native speakers to maintain Arabic in the USA, while Aleya Rouchdy‘s comprehensive book The Arabic Language in America presents several case studies of Arabic maintenance in the country prior to 2001. Clyne and Kipp

(1999) analyze pluricentric language (including Arabic) presence and maintenance in Australia, while Al-Sahafi and Barkhuizen (2006) provide an illuminating case study of Arabic in

Auckland, New Zealand. They point out that like the USA, their city (and country) has become a progressively more multicultural environment in which different languages either thrive or wither. Their focus is on Arabic maintenance and perception in an immigrant context, and the important private domains in which the language is strongest.

Al-Sahafi and Barkhuizen provide an excellent model for this paper, by combining a survey to collect data on the frequency of Arabic immigrants‘ language use with sociolinguistic interviews to gather narratives of the respondents‘ experiences. Rather than surveying the speakers, the survey portion of this study was instead directed to non-Arab American listeners; I am more interested here in perception of Arabic rather than production, and how those perceptions play into a possible language ideology of American English in relation to Arabic.

Mills (2005), talking about identical issues for Urdu speakers in the UK, situates her research in the ideological discourses of citizenship, participation in society, and media representation; the

two cases are rather similar. She discusses English being ―characterised as the way to be a full citizen…[and] use of a heritage language as cutting off such engagement‖ (Mills 253). Her methodology consists of interviews with ten Pakistani immigrants and ten of their (first- generation British) children, combined with analysis of ―official‖ pronouncements about language in the UK. This pairing of speaker opinion and describing national ideology is useful, but leaves out listener opinion. Taha (2006) provides an example of how to address this missing piece by surveying native English speakers (in this case, college students) to uncover their perceptions about Arabic words that have frequently appeared in media discourse about the Iraq

War. She argues that ―many of them appear to have gradually undergone a process of degeneration of meaning‖ (90). Media and linguistic majority often appear to feed off of each other to maintain an ideological assessment of Arabic, but uncovering the minority‘s self- perceptions through their experiences can demonstrate whether this effect is destructive or not.

The primary difficulty is separating linguistic perceptions and associated judgments with a priori knowledge; impressions of ethnicity can be partially constructed from non-auditory information (especially visual cues) just as easily as they can from language (Rampton 1995). A relatively recent public example would be controversial pundit Juan Williams, who described his strong reactions to individuals based on significant elements of appearance he thought of as

―Arab‖. Even information as seemingly innocent as an individual‘s name can play a part in determining what a speaker ―knows‖ and assumes about a person. Immediately after the Fort

Hood shooting in 2009, Arab-American groups received death threats when the only public information that had yet been released about the shooter was his name of Jordanian origin

(Associated Press). Such (assumed) knowledge of an individual‘s background can all play a part in a speaker‘s conception of that individual, making it difficult to tease out the particular effect

of the accent component. In order to truly determine what the role of accent alone is, the auditory information must be considered on its own.

The Study: Qualitative Methodology

This project grew out of a pilot study conducted for a course entitled ―Language and Identity‖ in

Fall 2009, which involved surveying Arabic speakers about their experiences with being non- native English speakers in the USA. This study brought forth numerous stories of discrimination during interviews with the speakers – fully half the respondents had a personal narrative, and others had a friend or family member they could easily reference who did – giving rise to the question of whether these were common experiences for all individuals with Arabic accents in the USA. If so, what was the process happening in American listeners that caused them to make and do prejudicial judgments and actions?

To expand upon the data from the original study, I conducted sociolinguistic interviews with three Arabic speakers from the Washington, D.C. community that I knew, both prior to and during the study. The interviews lasted about half an hour each and were very free-form in nature. I asked questions centered on the speakers‘ linguistic backgrounds, how they ended up in the US, and narratives they might have about using Arabic or having an Arabic accent. They shared both their positive and negative experiences as speakers of accented English in the USA, which portrayed the other side of the data. This study benefits from native speaker voices in the same way that the Mills (2005) and al-Sahafi and Barkhuizen (2006) studies did, by showing the relevance of the subject to real people. While providing numbers and statistics about the judgments made by listeners is useful, without the human element, it would be too easy to divorce those numbers from who is being affected by what they represent. Additionally, Anna

Marie Trester cites Coupland (2001) in saying ―quantitative approaches consistently fail to fully theorize the interaction of language context‖ on their own, when social context can in fact be one of the most important variables to consider (Trester 2008: 50).

Qualitative Data

Al-Sahafi and Barkhuizen‘s study demonstrated that Arabic is primarily used in private domains, namely in the home and in religious contexts, by minority Arabic-speaking communities (2006: 63). For non-Arabic-speaking Americans, the Arabic language is therefore unfamiliar, and exposure to it is usually fleeting; this allows their limited knowledge, colored by whatever qualities have been added to it (by media, for example) to remain incomplete. When

Arab-Americans have used Arabic around those who don‘t speak it, the reactions are mixed at best, if the responses I received are any indication. I present here a number of quotes from the original survey that speakers provided (all names have been changed to preserve anonymity):

“They usually tell Arabic sounds so strong. One of my American friends once told me that I sound so gay when I speak in English but so straight when I speak in Arabic.” --Abdul, 24-year-old student from Saudi Arabia

“I was at a US family house at Thanksgiving when my mother called. The lady at the hosting house, when hearing me speak Arabic with my mother, said „Oh, I bet he is giving instructions to buy a bomb.‟” --Amir, 25-year-old banker from Saudi Arabia

“Whenever I speak Arabic in front of someone, the listener is often surprised. They usually „can‟t believe‟ I speak Arabic because I „don‟t look Arab.‟” --Osman, 25-year-old college graduate from Jordan

“Americans are sometimes impressed when I tell them that I speak Arabic…however, they do not seem to enjoy the sound of it. I recall someone asking me once „how can such horrible sounds come out of such a pretty girl?‟” --Tahira, 25-year-old finance specialist from Tunisia

Each of these quotes has something to tell about the perception of the language. Abdul‘s quote is especially relevant for this study, since it shows that ―masculinity‖ is a trait associated with an Arabic man speaking Arabic, but a kind of ―de-masculinity‖ when he speaks English.

(This does seem to go against the statistically significant ratings that specifically show up in the

Arabic male speaker‘s ―assertive‖ and ―powerful‖ qualities, as noted above; perhaps Amir‘s friend was just choosing what he thought would be an offensive jibe.) Amir‘s story echoes a common idea bred from certain kinds of media: Arabic (especially when spoken by men) is equated with terrorism. Moreover, it shows the disregard Americans can have for Arabic speakers, whether joking or serious, by openly making such comparisons to them. Osman‘s quote demonstrates the important role of visual cues in determining how a listener will react to a speaker‘s accent or language use; listeners find it difficult to conceive of Arabic—or any other language—separated from what they think a speaker should look like. (Osman is fair-skinned, light-haired, and clean-shaven: not the stereotypical Arab man in appearance.) And Tahira‘s story shows that beyond making character judgments about a person from their accent, the voice itself (in Arabic‘s case, probably the phonetics of its pharyngeal and uvular consonants) can receive negative evaluation that affects communication. The Bayard et al. 2001 study included categories like ―pleasant voice‖ as mentioned before; these are not qualities that are determined after the fact by the sound of the voice, but can be just as important in constructing a listener‘s impression of the speaker.

In line with these responses are the longer interviews that were conducted more recently.

While the survey featured fairly brief responses, in these cases I was able to go more in-depth and understand the more complicated beliefs and impressions of speakers. The first interviewee

was Aliya, a 24-year-old Palestinian student who shared a number of stories and thoughts with me about her experiences as an Arabic speaker in the US:1

(on speaking Arabic in public) A: Well, I was walking M Street [in Georgetown], and I was – I always talk on the phone to my friends and family back home, and of course I always speak in Arabic. So a man out of nowhere, just came and was like, ‗What the hell's this language? You sound like a cat! You don't sound like a human being!‘ And I didn't even know how to respond, I was really shocked, and I – I felt so humiliated that he said that my language sounded like a cat, like it was meowing. G: Was this like... a crazy homeless person, or – I mean, who says that…? A: No no, just a guy, a normal guy with, you know, a T-shirt and pants...

(on the role of language versus appearance in people‟s reactions) A: It's more the appearance, if you look like an Arab. But the language is... maybe 40 percent, 50 percent, but not the whole thing... but once you get that appearance, then the language gets associated with it. I guess it's easier for females more than males. Males are more associated with, um... you know how politics is, I don't want to say the word—! G: Terrorism? A: Yeah. But they are more, they are more associated with that, being male Arab, more than a female even if she had a hijab on.

(on speaking with an Arabic accent in a university context) A: In one of my classes in the summer, um, she's a woman, she's from here, and she was taking a summer course with me, with Dr. ______as well. And um, she said, ‗Oh, your English is perfect, where are you from?‘ And I said, okay, I'm from Palestine. So, she was really shocked, and she started speaking slowly to me, she was like, ‗O-kay... um, what - sounds - do - you - use - in - Arabic?‘, and she would - speak - like - this. It's like, okay, I understand English. I have a BA in English literature and I'm going for my master's, my English is not that bad.

As a non-Muslim, Aliya does not wear the hijab or other articles of clothing that are widely associated with women from the Arab world; in light of this lack of visual cues, her first story especially shows an experience centered on her language use. Again, while this study asked respondents to judge the speakers rather than the quality of their voices, as in the case of Tahira above, these assessments of quality are certainly indicative of a negative attitude towards the speaker. Furthermore, the fact that random passerby feel entitled to express these sentiments to

1 Since I was interested in the interviewees’ narratives, rather than specific features of their speech, the interviews are presented here in block quotes instead of intonation units. 13

speakers is astonishing in and of itself; if only we could find out who, in fact, that man was, and why he thought his comments were acceptable.

The second interview was with Salim, a 44-year-old café manager in Washington, D.C.

Salim has a somewhat complicated upbringing: born in Cairo to Lebanese Christian parents, he came to the US at age five, and grew up speaking French and Arabic. He says that he made efforts to be hyper-correct when learning English in school (to the point of adopting a British accent), but that living abroad in Europe and Asia for a period of time brought his original accent back to the foreground. He was kind enough to share his stories as well:

(on the change in people‟s reactions to his accent) S: ―Now they‘re intrigued. Because they have no idea. Prior, growing up, it was, ―Oh, you‘re a foreigner, you come from where? You sleep in what? You sleep with who?‖ Basically all the crap you go through when you‘re growing up. And my brother especially had a hard time of it.‖ G: ―It was harder for him than you?‖ S: ―Well, I‘m the youngest, when we came over – he had a hard time to the point where he lost his Arabic and French because he was going through school at age 12 or 13. I didn‘t have that…for him, now he can‘t even stand to hear them.‖ (on speaking Arabic as unifier and separator) G: ―I heard you speaking Arabic to a woman the other day, she seemed happy about it…‖ S: ―Yes, there are a lot of Arabic people who come in here who are introverted because of all the nonsense going on, so when they hear someone speaking Arabic, I have no shame in telling people how it is. And there are lots of stereotypes, especially the Muslim customers coming in, present-day Muslims, and they‘re young and female…they would not be comfortable alone. But this –‖ [indicates his cross pendant] G: ―The cross?‖ S: ―Like, even speaking Arabic, this one woman came in the other day…she could tell I was Lebanese, and then she saw the cross, and she knew by whatever I wasn‘t from her… her end of the world of religion. And I could not serve her. I could not serve her coffee except like, putting it into two cups and giving her the one my hand didn‘t touch.‖

(on how Americans could overcome prejudice) S: ―It‘s very simple, every single person, even if you don‘t speak the language, should be thrown in another country for the year. Because you learn, you grow, and you see – what we‘ve lost as Americans is…you learn how a different society functions. France, Italy, Greece, Germany, they all forced to leave the country one year.‖ G: ―Or the UK, the gap year.‖ S: ―Exactly.‖ G: ―No, I agree, it would be wonderful if, um, everyone could. You think that‘s the best way?‖

S: ―Well you learn other ways. You‘re not snobby towards other people‘s ways. And as far as accents, anybody who‘s family-educated, it‘s about the way you‘re raised, would not have a problem with an accent. Your neighborhood…you need that nonwhite culture, you have to associate with people outside your, your class.‖

Salim was a good resource because he could talk about how attitudes in his experience had changed over the past forty years, especially after 9/11. His comments show two particular ideas: the interconnectedness of identity symbols (language with religion, class, etc.) and the fact that even other Arabic speakers can have particular reactions to accents. Following Silverstein‘s

(2003) concept of the indexical order, Salim‘s Lebanese dialect when speaking Arabic first makes plain (or indexes) his background, which in turn carries social information that can be interpreted as very relaxing and reassuring for some fellow Arabic speakers (such as the first woman he mentioned), or completely off-putting for others (such as the second). The Arabic- speaking population in the US has become much more diverse throughout the last century (see

Rouchdy 1992), bringing these tensions within the speech community to the forefront. On the other hand, the dialect variation and differences between the many groups that make up this entity the ―Middle East‖ are rarely discussed by Americans. While native speakers have their own strong opinions about particular Arabic accents and what they suggest, as Salim suggests, many Americans are generally just ―intrigued‖ by the Arabic accent in general when they ask about it, and have no deeper understanding of the internal dialect differences. Although the speakers in the sentences elicited for the survey are native speakers of Levantine Arabic, the judgments of respondents can still be applied to other Arabic speakers in general.

The third interview presented here is with Zahra, a 28-year-old analyst from Morocco:

(on Arabic accent humor) Z: Everybody‘s familiar with the bark joke? ―Where can I bark?‖ G: No, I don‘t know that one. Z: So, this guy is looking for parking – Egyptian guy, or Jordanian, place any nationality there. And, uh, he sees a cop by a 7-11 or whatever, and is like, ―Can I bark here?‖ The American

cop is like, ―Well, it‘s America, it‘s a free country, you can bark anywhere.‖ So he parks and then the next thing you know, he gets a ticket. ―How come I got a ticket?‖ ―Well, cause you parked there.‖ ―But I asked you if I could bark here!‖

(on mispronunciation of the language) Z: And nobody really knows what Arabic sounds like. Everybody‘s aware of the terrorist, ―AKHmed‖ the terrorist, which is not even pronounced properly, because Ahmed is with a Haa‟. It‘s a softer H than ―khaa‟‖1… Everybody‘s like, ―Yeah, his name is AKHmed‖ and I‘m like, ―No!‖ Because I have a coworker named Ahmed, and they keep repeating it, and they just refuse to fix that. Even though the guy is from Pakistan!

(on the portion of American perception of Arabs that comes from media) Z: Entirely! Well, actually, maybe eighty percent. The other twenty percent relies on…Arabic people. I mean, we, as Arabs, need to speak up and do something about it. Nobody‘s really making the point of saying, ―Okay, I‘m Arab, I look normal just like you.‖ But for the most part it‘s the media. FOX channel, warmongering, war machine, among others. Um…I mean, it‘s just, it‘s reached proportions that I never even thought were possible for the US. IT‘s pretty sad. G: And of course, a large part of it is 9/11. Z: Yeah, 9/11 and then… it‘s not even 9/11 in itself because there are other terrorist attacks that have occurred in the US. G: Like Oklahoma City. Z: Exactly, Timothy – MacVeigh? So I‘m going to just start singling out everybody called MacVeigh or something? That‘s not how it works. 1 [ˈax mɛd] versus [ˈaħ mɛd]

Zahra, like Aliya, does not present an outward appearance that matches the majority idea of Arab women (i.e. she does not wear the hijab). Having learned English and French throughout her childhood in addition to Arabic, her accent carries more of these features, and so she says she has had fewer personal negative experiences based on her accent; however, she also describes her immigrant experience as atypical. As an analyst who deals with humanitarian crises in North

Africa, she finds Arabic useful in her everyday work, especially with the current political situation. Still, her comments on the American perception of the Arabic language and the representation of its speakers in the media were insightful, and she had numerous stories

(including the joke above, whose humor lies in the difficulty of pronouncing ―P‖ for Arabic speakers) that reflected this perception.

Although several of these experiences seem to center on language, it is difficult to tell if accent and/or Arabic use is playing a key role in affecting the speakers‘ interaction with

Americans. What these narratives establish is that such prejudice does exist, either stemming from or picking out linguistic features, as part of a larger culture of discrimination. However, quantifiable data must be gathered to demonstrate whether the linguistic aspect plays a statistically significant role. To this end, in this next part of the study I will expand upon the accounts above by constructing a survey meant to gather the reactions of Americans to hearing the Arabic accent. Statistical analysis of these data will show the value judgments that listeners are making about a speaker when presented with that accent.

The Study: Quantitative Methodology

This study will use an audio-only perception survey, such as those created by Niedzielski

(1999), Bayard et al. (2001), or Preston (2004). These were originally designed to determine how listeners assigned character traits to speakers based on their (American English) dialect features, the procedure can be extended to examine native speakers‘ judgments of non-native speakers.

Bayard et al. asked respondents to rate the qualities of speakers in sound clips using a Likert scale (which measures a quality from ―less X‖ to ―more X‖) from 1 through 6. The participants had to assign values based on personal qualities (such as ―authoritative‖, ―hardworking‖,

―warm‖, etc.), voice qualities (such as ―pleasant voice‖), and status indices (for example, if they had higher or lower income) (Bayard et al. 34). By measuring the responses, the researchers were able to determine patterns in the opinions of individual communities (whose members had, of course, self-identified as being part of one community or another) regarding the others, and to examine how these reflected established ideologies about each one. This method is useful for

testing the hypothesis that listeners self-identifying as members of one group or another will assign qualities in a certain way. Moreover, it illustrates again how an accent indexes different social meanings to different groups (in this case, ones outside the speech community), and whether the results can be interpreted relative to the experiences of prejudice and self- perceptions Arabic speakers presented about themselves when interviewed.

In order to determine which qualities would be best to test for in such a perception study,

I gathered four informal focus groups, comprised of three individuals each, with a range of ages, ethnic backgrounds, occupations, and political/religious views. Each group listened to clips of native Arabic speakers, one male and one female, from the public domain Speech Accent

Archive, hosted through George Mason University (http://accent.gmu.edu), then was asked to assign three positive and three negative qualities to each speaker they heard. While the vast majority of participants focused on how ―foreign‖ the speakers sounded, enough character traits were gathered that I was able to choose some of the most common:

approachable assertive educated friendly independent intelligent laid-back powerful reliable

Note that not all of these qualities were originally in a positive format; quite a few respondents would define a speaker as ―weak‖ or ―unfriendly‖, for example. The nature of the survey, as described below, required that these be changed to ―less‖ or ―more‖ of a particular positive quality. In addition to these, a tenth quality, ―religious‖, was added to the list. I discussed with the focus group participants the associations between religious extremism and

Islam, and between Islam and Arabic. They were nearly unanimous in their assumption that the

Arabic speakers were at least practicing Muslims, even though (despite their close historical

relationship) being an Arabic speaker is not predicated upon being Muslim, and vice versa (as seen in two of the interviewees, for example).

Following the focus group sessions, I recruited speakers to record the sound clips for the online survey. The speakers were all educated at the same American university, at the graduate level, and are fluent English speakers. They consisted of one male and one female speaker each in three native languages: English (Southern United States dialect), Arabic (Levantine dialect, centered on the eastern Mediterranean area), and Spanish (Ecuadorian dialect). Although Arabic vs. English was the key pair for this study, Spanish was included to differentiate where survey- takers were hearing general ―foreign-ness‖ instead of specific qualities associated with Arabic.

For the survey, the English speakers both elicited the following two sentences (a total of four clips), while the other speakers elicited both sentences in English (eight clips), as well as in their respective languages (four in Arabic, four in Spanish):

EN: ―My brother Peter is very clever; he was a student at Georgetown for just over three years.‖ ―Charlie bought a ring to propose to his girlfriend; God willing, I think she‘ll accept.‖

AR: (akhii Boutros dhaakii jiddan: kaana Taaliban fii jaami`at Georgetown aTwal qaliilan min thalaathah sanawaat)

(ishtaraa Karlus kha‟iman li-khuTibah Habiibatahu: in sha‟ Allah aDHunn annahaa sa- taqbil)

ES: ―Mi hermano Pedro es muy inteligente; estudió en Georgetown un poquito más de tres años.‖

―Carlos compró un anillo para declararse a su novía; ojalá que le acepte."

The sentences were constructed in this way for three reasons. First, the topics are rather neutral: it was easy for all the speakers to elicit the sentences without too much inflection that might sway a listener towards rating one quality higher or lower. Second, they contain several

phonemes that are not native to the dialect of Arabic spoken by the subjects: [p], [g], [v], [dʒ],

[tʃ], [ɹ], [ŋ], and several vowels, such as [ʌ], [o] and [ɔ]. (Some of these are also unrepresented in

Spanish.) The motivation behind this was to foreground non-native pronunciations and make the accents more evident. Finally, Taha (2006) outlines a number of Arabic terms that have permeated American vocabulary since the onset of U.S. intervention in Iraq; the best-known, and the one with the most overwhelming reaction is Taliban (92). This word literally means

―student‖ in Arabic, and so when the first sentence was translated into Arabic, the term would stand out to an American listener among words that might be otherwise unrecognizable. In the second sentence, ―God willing‖ was translated to in sha‟ Allah, which would also be salient; this was intended to test for perception of the ―religious‖ characteristic as well, and to make it apparent that the person in those sound clips were speaking Arabic.

Once the sound clips were recorded, the anonymous survey was constructed online and distributed using social media (particularly Facebook) and word of mouth. All participants were required to be native speakers of American English, born and raised in the US, and at least 18 years of age. After reading through the consent information, they were asked to listen to each of the twenty clips in succession and rate the speaker in each clip for all ten qualities. A Likert scale was used from 1 to 5 to rate from ―less ---‖ to ―more ---‖ for each. After the survey was complete, participants were asked to provide free-response demographic information for data analysis, and results were sent through an anonymous mail service.

The complete survey can be found in Appendix A, while the order of sound clips in the different versions can be found in Appendix B.

Quantitative Data

A total of 234 respondents took part in the survey portion of the study. (The sample size for each of the demographic categories can be found in Appendix C.) Ten categories were considered for analysis: sex, race, geographic origin (within the US), news viewing habits, news sources, exposure to Arabic accent, exposure to other accents, religious identification, political identification, and survey version. It is apparent that certain demographic groups are better represented than the others, by virtue of the social networking method of distributing the survey.

I took this into account when considering the statistical significance of different groups, and as a general rule, considered groups of fewer than 15 respondents to be too small for discussion here.

(I would be interested to see if a continuation of this study can gather more respondents in those small groups which were statistically significant, and see if their patterns hold.)

An initial comparison of the means shows some immediate bias:

Average rating for female Arabic speaker: 3.0626 } mean 3.0921 Average rating for male Arabic speaker: 3.1215

Average rating for female Spanish speaker: 3.1495 } mean 3.0806 Average rating for male Spanish speaker: 3.0116

Average rating for female English speaker: 3.2168 } mean 3.1999 Average rating for male English speaker: 3.1829

Clearly the English speakers have the advantage here, while Arabic and Spanish speakers are fairly closely rated. This suggests the importance of finding which of the ten qualities are being selected as higher-rated for English vs. non-English, and which ones are being selected as particularly Arabic. I also divided the speakers by sex not expecting to find much of a difference, and although the English speakers have similar means, Arabic and especially Spanish turned out to have a large disparity. In addition to breaking down the results along lines of the respondents‘

demographics, it may also be important to investigating the differences in responses for each speaker based on sex.

Even just seeing these numbers, there is clearly a great deal to be analyzed for all three accents and their speakers. However, since I am concerned in this paper with specifically Arabic accent and its perception, I will have to reserve a deeper examination of Spanish and English speakers‘ accents for another occasion.

Analysis

1. Comparing accents for levels of significance

For the analysis, I first conducted a two-tailed t-test, a statistical test to determine if there is a non-coincidental relationship between the independent and dependent variables (in this case, the listener demographic categories and their ratings). The test examined the difference in means between Arabic-accented English, Spanish-accented English, and Southern USA-accented

English, in order to determine which of the ten qualities had statistically significant differences between their ratings. Figure 1 illustrates the means for each quality in each accent.

. These initial data reveal a number of interesting effects. First, it is notable that English is, for almost every quality (with the glaring exception of ―religious‖), rated more highly overall than the other two languages. The gap between means in each case is relatively narrow between

Arabic and Spanish, somewhat larger between Arabic and English, and (with a few exceptions) largest of all between English and Spanish. This suggests that English is rated more highly than the other two; Arabic is rated slightly higher than Spanish for most of the qualities, with the exceptions of ―intelligent‖ and ―laid-back‖. A number of participants articulated in the free- response section of the survey their confusion at hearing the word ―God‖ in the elicited

Figure 1: Overall speaker ratings broken down by accent and quality (respondent pool n = 234)

An asterisk linking two or three of the means indicates that there was a statistically significant rating between the pair ( |t| < .05, for the purposes of this study). For example, the first cluster shows that English native speakers were rated most approachable, then Spanish speakers, then Arabic; the differences between mean ratings of Arabic/English and Spanish/English were found to be significant. Remember that means are on a scale of 1 to 5, so that a mean of 1 would very strongly suggest the speakers are not associated with the appropriate quality, while 5 would suggest that they are; 3 is neutral. The range of the graph has been restricted to 2.5 – 3.5, and the mean values to the second decimal place, for the sake of visibility.

sentences, yet clearly there is a (statistically) significant association between Arabic accent and being ―religious‖ here. (Juxtaposing those English sentences with Arabic ones featuring the word

Allah may have reinforced the effect, as discussed previously in this paper.)

Beyond the initial finding that Arabic language, or at least the accent, is ranked between

Spanish and English, we must consider which qualities are being judged by foreign accent in general, as opposed to Arabic specifically. If a quality was rated significantly different in English than in both Arabic and Spanish, but not between Arabic and Spanish, then the respondents are differentiating between English and non-English; this is the case for ―approachable‖, ―friendly‖, and ―independent‖. Conversely, if a quality was rated significantly different in only Spanish or

Arabic, then the respondents are differentiating between English and that language; this is the case for ―laid-back‖ and ―religious‖ (Arabic) and ―educated‖ and ―reliable‖ (Spanish). Finally,

―assertive‖ and ―powerful‖ had significantly different ratings for all three accents, suggesting all three languages are being strongly associated with their particular ratings in the perception of respondents.

Respondents didn‘t perceive any statistically significant difference that they would equate with ―intelligent‖; it is the only quality that seems truly unaffected by accent as a whole, and is higher than all the others for all three accents

2. Examining particular quality ratings across respondent groups

Now we turn our attention to the two qualities that stood out from the t-test: ―laid-back‖ and

―religious‖. It should be noted that respondents found the English speakers to be more laid-back but less religious than Arabic-accented speakers. As there are a number of demographic categories being tested in this study, the following graphs will show the mean ratings for these

two qualities for each group, within each category. Here I have included the graphs for sex and

race (as they were easily manageable groups with only two factors, where I expected to find

significance), as well as those that did in fact turn out to have statistically significant populations

within them. All other graphs for these two qualities can be found in Appendix C. Note that the

graphs are shown in close-up to more easily demonstrate the differences between the average

means, and their heights should not be considered statistically significant on their own. (As noted

above, the difference in means itself is still important.)

2.1 Laid-back

Figure 2.1.1: Mean ratings for Sex (F = female, M = male) and Race (N = nonwhite, W = white)

Figure 2.1.2: Mean ratings for Political affiliation (Key – f = libertarian, g = left, h = centre-left, j = moderate, k = centre- right, l = right)

Figure 2.1.3: Mean ratings for Religious affiliation (Key – a = Catholic, A = Orthodox, d = Jewish, D = Buddhist, s = Protestant, S = neo-pagan, y = atheist, Y = agnostic)

It should be noted that with a few exceptions, none of the means are wildly different; as

such, we are more interested in where the differences are statistically significant than where they

are large. Furthermore, not all of the graphed data fit with the general trend established in the

initial analysis: Arabic as least laid-back, then Spanish, then Southern. There are some occasions

when Arabic overtakes Spanish, and others in which Spanish overtakes Southern. (The only

group who completely reversed this trend was the handful of self-identified Buddhist

respondents.)

The significance becomes more apparent when examining Southern vs. Arabic accent, as

opposed to Spanish vs. Arabic accent. In most demographic categories, Arabic never overtakes

Southern (though they are roughly equal at some points); the rare exceptions are those

respondents who receive their news from multiple sources (which rated Southern remarkably

low), political conservatives, and in religion, self-identified Jews and Buddhists. All the groups

but the first have rather small sample sizes (see Appendix C), and so results should be interpreted

with caution; equally, some of the other very small samples (Alaskan residents, Orthodox

respondents, etc.) have comparatively large discrepancies that cannot necessarily be considered

representative. Spanish accent, on the other hand, varies widely in relation to both Arabic and

English.

A least-squares regression (see Appendix D) displays significance at a much more

detailed level than the initial data, taking into account both sample size and consistency across

the group. The results are somewhat surprising: of all the possible demographic groups, the only

ones who had statistically significant consistency to their ratings were those who identified as

politically liberal (left) and/or atheist. While the majority of respondents were liberal, not even

one-tenth identified as atheist; liberals rated Arabic speakers higher overall, while atheists rated

them lower. (These data are visible in the bar graphs above.) Finally, no one factor (including

religious beliefs and political leanings) was significant in its entirety, only individual sub-groups

within them; atheists will tend to rate in a particular way, but religious self-identification itself is

not necessarily significant. The overall difference between laid-back ratings for English accents

and Arabic accents cannot be attributed to any one demographic factor, even if members of

particular demographic sets tend towards rating Arabic accents higher or lower than the mean.

(As a final note, the multiple-news-source group‘s low rating of Southern accents was

statistically significant, as was the atheists‘ high rating of Spanish accents. The atheists, overall,

seem to have stronger and more consistent opinions.)

2.2 Religious

Figure 2.2.1: Mean ratings for Sex (F = female, M = male) and Race (N = nonwhite, W = white) 27

Figure 2.2.2: Mean ratings for Contact with Arabic (i = frequent/close contact, o = occasional contact, p = rare/no contact) and Contact with other languages/accents (I = frequent/close contact, O = occasional contact, P = rare/no contact)

It is immediately apparent that the ratings for ―religious‖ do not as obviously fit the trend

displayed by the initial analysis: Arabic as most religious, followed by Spanish, then English.

The ratings are different from group to group, and occasionally the trend reverses altogether; the

only place where it holds absolutely true is in the sex and race categories. Rather than concluding

Arabic is almost always the lowest-rated this time, we can see that English is almost never the

highest-rated, again with a few notable exceptions: a few small-sample geographic areas,

newspaper-readers, and Jews all rated the Southern USA accent as the most religious.

Again, a least-squares regression (see Appendix D) shows the significance of each

demographic category. This time, the categories were much different: both sexes showed

significance in their ratings, as did the group of respondents who had frequent or close contact

with Arabic speakers. Women tended to feel Arabic accents sounded more religious than the

mean (and more religious than either of the others), while men rated them slightly lower than the

mean (but also considered them more religious than the other two). Since both men and women

had significant patterns to their responses, and both sample sizes were rather large, we can say

with statistical confidence that sex is a determining factor in whether or not a listener hears an

Arabic accent as more or less ―religious‖. Additionally, if both groups rated Arabic as more

religious than either English or Spanish (and all respondents identified as one of the two), this alludes to a general impression among all respondents that Arabic speakers are religious.

Analyzing the data by other demographic factors shows that there can be exceptions to this trend, but very rarely are they statistically significant.

The groups that had strong patterns to their responses for the Spanish accent were political moderates—who showed a strong inclination to rate slightly higher than the mean—and curiously enough, respondents who took survey versions 1 and 3 (who rated higher and lower than the mean, respectively). Religious ratings for the English accent were significant among residents of the Mid-Atlantic region (another large sample) and lower than the mean, as well as again, survey version 1 (for which they were lower than the mean). The fact that both of these accents found significance in the survey version seriously opens the question of whether the order of the questions themselves had an effect on respondents‘ answers. Version 1 began with both Southern-accent speakers, while Version 3 immediately presented all three accents in quick succession (see Appendix B); if there are more subtle effects taking place in the way sound clip order affected perception, it will have to be determined by further research.

3. Effects of different subcategories of sound clip

So far I have analyzed trends in listener response for Arabic and other accents in general; however, the sound clips themselves can be sub-categorized by sex and language spoken. In order to test if respondents were rating Arabic accent differently based on whether the speaker was male or female, and if he or she were speaking Arabic or English, I conducted further two-

tailed t-tests. The results for speakers in general showed significant results. Figure 3.1 shows the means for each speaker when using Arabic vs. English, and the differences between them.

Figure 3.1: Ratings for Arabic speakers broken down by speaker sex and speaker language (respondent pool n = 234)

An asterisk linking two of the means indicates that there was a statistically significant rating between the pair ( |t| < .05, for the purposes of this study). Remember that means are on a scale of 1 to 5, so that a mean of 1 would very strongly suggest the speakers are not associated with the appropriate quality, while 5 would suggest that they are; 3 is neutral. The range of the graph has been restricted to 2.5 – 3.5 for the sake of visibility.

The asterisks present differences in the means that were statistically significant. These indicate that there was a strong correlation between a higher rating and an Arabic female speaking Arabic, and an Arabic man speaking English. In terms of speaking Arabic versus having Arabic-accented English, there was a correlation between a higher rating and the male speaker; there was no statistically significant preference for male or female when the speakers were using their native language.

The results become even more interesting when broken down by quality, as shown in

Figure 3.2. It is clear that the speaker‘s sex can have an effect on the listener‘s perceptions of his or her individual qualities, as can the language he or she is speaking. The means all indicate that listeners prefer the Arabic female speaker to speak Arabic instead of English, while they prefer the Arabic male speaker to speak English instead of Arabic. The one notable inversion is that listeners found the Arabic female speaking English to sound ―more religious‖. The preferences are significant for the female speaker in ―educated‖ and ―intelligent‖, suggesting respondents

Figure 3.2: Ratings for Arabic speakers broken down by speaker sex, speaker language, and quality (respondent pool n = 234)

An asterisk linking two of the means indicates that there was a statistically significant rating between the pair ( |t| < .05, for the purposes of this study). For example, the first cluster shows that male Arabic speakers using English were rated most approachable, then female Arabic speakers using Arabic, female speakers using English, and male speakers using Arabic. The differences between the female speaker‘s mean ratings were found to be significant, as were the male speaker‘s. Remember that means are on a scale of 1 to 5, so that a mean of 1 would very strongly suggest the speakers are not associated with the appropriate quality, while 5 would suggest that they are; 3 is neutral. The range of the graph has been restricted to 2.5 – 3.5, and the mean values to the second decimal place, for the sake of visibility.

strongly feel she sounds more so when speaking Arabic; the same is true for the male speaker sounding more ―approachable‖ and ―friendly‖ in English. In terms of sex, respondents showed significance in associating the male speaker with ―assertive‖ and ―powerful‖ in Arabic over the female speaker, and several more (―approachable‖, ―educated‖, ―independent‖, ―intelligent‖,

―reliable‖) in English.

The two factors which were seen as generally significant for Arabic accent in general,

―laid-back‖ and ―religious‖, are the only two which have no significant differences when broken down by sex and language spoken: all elicitations in the study were perceived to be in the

(statistical) same neighborhood, which was (significantly) lower than the other accents for the former quality, and higher than the others for the latter.

4. Interpreting the data

There is clearly a large amount of data to be interpreted here, and these are just the first steps in examining all the potential correlations between speaker and listener information. I have focused on the most significant features that will address the research question: where are the strongest correlations between the groups a listener is part of and their relative ratings of the speaker‘s qualities? With the first analysis, picking out the qualities of ―laid-back‖ and ―religious‖ as the ones which sound respectively least and most ―Arabic‖ sheds some light on general perceptions of the populace. There is a consistent barrage of rhetoric in American media that portrays Arabs and/or Arabic speakers as devout fanatics, the exact kind of person you would expect to fit those ratings.

The second analysis pulled out the demographic groups who followed that trend most strongly. For ―laid-back‖, liberals rated Arabic accent speakers slightly (but significantly) higher

than the mean, while atheists rated them lower. I would argue the atheist trend, at least, could stem again from the association of ―Arabic accent‖ with ―religious extremist‖; a self-identified atheist could imagine such an individual to be less laid-back and more uptight than average. For

―religious‖, in turn, besides the earlier mention that sex was a determining factor in the (overall) high rating, close or frequent contact with Arabic speakers had a significant downward pull. This may show that those who encounter Arabic speakers most frequently find the stereotypes about their religion justified, or simply that the speakers they deal with present their faith more outwardly. I know of no statistics indicating how many Muslim women wear the hijab or other symbols of religion, but it is not difficult to imagine that a respondent who encountered a given number of veiled women would believe he or she had more frequent contact than a respondent who encountered a similar number of secular Arab women.

I should mention that in terms of news viewing habits and sources (as seen in Appendix

D), while almost all groups seem to follow the trend in ratings for the two qualities, none of their ratings were statistically significant. This could mean that media have less of a consistent effect on listener bias than thought, or that the sample size for each group isn‘t large enough to capture a mean common to all of the speakers of the group.

Finally, examining the differences in ratings for male versus female speakers and Arabic versus Arabic-accented English showed a preference for the Arabic female to speak Arabic and the Arabic male to speak English. The fact that this latter preference was statistically significant for ―assertive‖, ―powerful‖, and ―reliable‖ suggests that Arabic accent is a desirable quality if one wants to sound more traditionally masculine when speaking English. It would be interesting to further break down the data and see if there were correlations between particular demographic groups and this trend: for example, do male respondents rate the Arabic male speaker more

highly for these qualities? What about white respondents, or liberal respondents? On the other hand, the only significant effects for the female speaker were that respondents rated her lower on

―educated‖ and ―intelligent‖ (the quality that was untouched in the first analysis) when speaking

English. These qualities were still the highest rating-wise, but the difference between them makes it crystal clear that respondents preferred her speaking Arabic in those two regards. (She was, however, still rated more highly than the male speaker overall in certain qualities –

―friendly‖ and ―reliable‖ – and her Arabic was rated slightly higher.)

A tool that is useful to visualize how these data are arranged is the indexical field, what

Penelope Eckert calls ―a constellation of meanings that are ideologically linked…[it] is not a static structure, but at every moment a representation of a continuous process of reinterpretation‖

(Eckert 2008: 464). In terms of the data given above, the indexical field allows for a particular

(usually phonetic, possibly also discursive) feature to be analyzed by centering on its main interactive connotation, then moving outward in the direction of a particular speaker making the choice to use the feature in the first place. Individual qualities, as we have seen above, are associated more or less strongly with individual speakers. So, if we were to pick out phonetic features that signaled Arabic accent—the voiced [p] that‘s not quite [b] referenced in the joke back in Zahra‘s interview, or the pharyngeal approximant [ʕ] that is the hallmark of Arabic—and place it within the indexical field, combined with what we know about perceived qualities for male and female speakers, a listener might perceive something like this:

The one trait I was not able to represent well in this model (after Moore and Podesva

2009) was the numerical values of the means for each quality, for each of the four groups.

However, the graphic emphasizes where the quality is most strongly associated: an Arabic female speaker is not perceived as powerful in (statistically significant) relation to the male speaker, while both speakers are seen as more friendly when speaking English, etc. Clearly these are only neutral or positive qualities; the accent can (and probably) does index negative qualities as well in conjunction with these. As discussed previously, respondents were skewed heavily in favor of the Arabic male speaking English, hence the cluster of qualities in his quadrant of the field. Two other points must be made: first, this is obviously only the indexical field for the limited sample of the survey respondent pool. The field might be better rendered with variables

(such as those Silverstein used in his cornerstone 2003 paper investigating indexicality: n, n+1, etc., to show successive moves of perceived social meaning), whose content would be determined by whomever was hearing the accent. And secondly, besides the lack of quantifiable numbers here, the field may falsely imply that such indexed characteristics fall in a discrete way in relation to the speakers, when in fact it is more of a continuum: a male Arabic speaker using

English is not perceived as being the same exact amount of ―friendly‖ every time. This effect is easily demonstrable from the individual survey responses, some of which deviate greatly from the mean.

I don‘t wish to make sweeping generalizations about Arabic male versus female speakers and how they are being perceived from these initial data, but it is not difficult to pinpoint the stereotypes they are reinforcing. Arabic men (as Aliya alluded to in her interview) are often associated with terrorism, especially when they are speaking Arabic; therefore, listeners may perceive the male speaker‘s English as less threatening, and rate him higher. Conversely, there is a tradition of Orientalism in Western culture that exoticizes Arabic women; therefore, when the female speaker is using Arabic, she is rated more highly than when she uses English. However, in either language, she is rated as sounding less ―assertive‖ or ―powerful‖, calling to mind all kinds of stereotypes about oppressed Arabic women, especially in a Muslim context. In future research, I will have to ask respondents to share their thoughts on gender relations in the Arab world, and see if those attitudes correspond with these ratings.

Limitations and Solutions

There are a number of limitations to this study that I must acknowledge. First and foremost is the distribution of the survey through the Internet: while social networking is invaluable as a means of quickly and efficiently getting large numbers of respondents, the pool tends to be skewed. As a 20-something white agnostic liberal from New Jersey, who checks the news daily and has a multicultural group of friends, the vast majority of my direct recruits to take the survey fit into one or more of those categories. To truly get an accurate portrait of what ―American‖ thought processes when hearing accents, it is important to have a diverse selection of respondents who

represent a cross-section of the population. There were a surprising number of conservatives,

Protestant Christians, Californians, and middle-aged respondents in the sample population— mostly friends and family of classmates here at the university—but not enough to analyze those groups‘ perceptions without hesitation. Additionally, the very nature of an optional survey creates bias in the results: those who do not wish to take such a survey might have much stronger opinions (or weaker) than those who do. A truly accurate description of this study would state that it reflects the perceptions of only a narrow segment of the American population; however, even within such a narrow segment, there are interesting results to be found.

The free-response comments illustrated a number of issues that people had personally with the survey. Some responses had to be removed from the data because computer troubles wouldn‘t allow the sound clips to play. A few others took genuine offense to the idea that accent had an impact on their character judgments, and rated a ―3‖ for all speakers, in all qualities, rather than simply not taking the survey. Beyond the technical complexity of getting an adequate data set, there is also the possibility that respondents were overthinking their answers. The survey specifically asked them to rate as quickly and instinctively as possible, but there was no time limit on the questions. On the other hand, a number of respondents (notably those who identified as linguistics or social science students) wrote long comments stating their ideals about judging the person for who they are rather than their superficial attributes, and then proceeded to have some of the most wide-ranging ratings of all.

The sound clips themselves must also be considered. The qualities assigned by the respondents are reactions to only one male and one female speaker of each accent, eliciting only two or four sentences. Additional speakers and elicitations would be helpful to determine whether these initial samples were in fact representative of respondent populations‘ typical

reactions to an entire group. However, as stated before, it is important to separate the auditory information from any other knowledge, and it wouldn‘t have been profitable to provide, for example, a clip from a Friday service in a mosque, and then ask respondents to rate how religious the speaker sounded. Purely linguistic bias must be distinguished from religious bias, political bias, and every other kind that can be controlled for. The elicitors were very uninflected in their speech, and did not stray too far in one direction or another in any of their clips. Still, ideally the survey might have had numerous speakers with a range of sentences, both male and female, from a variety of ages and backgrounds. Such a survey would have been much longer than the projected 20 minutes it took respondents to get through this one, though, and it was difficult enough to get enough respondents to find the time.

Finally, this study can by no means capture all the intricacies of accent perception for the populations in question. Other studies of a similar nature have focused on much smaller populations, with much more specific respondents being surveyed, and have still turned out massive amounts of data. The process by which we index particular speech features and groups of features to particular personal qualities is an immensely complicated one, and a study of this size can only scratch the surface of the topic. Assigning qualities in this way is daunting for two reasons: not only is it difficult for respondents to consciously make these choices, but not all qualities are created equal. For example, the relative neutrality of ―intelligent‖ in the data suggests that either we realize so quickly that it is socially inappropriate to make intelligence judgments, that we suppress them before we can honestly report them, or that intelligence truly is a quality that does not show through in audio clips. Additionally, different groups may have different impressions of the qualities being examined: ―more religious‖ is not necessarily a

positive quality for atheists, and ―more laid-back‖ may not be palatable to Type A respondents who work 80 hours a week.

Nevertheless, the study presents a great deal of data that can be analyzed and re-analyzed to find significance. What it could primarily benefit from is expansion: a larger and more diverse respondent pool, an analysis of the Spanish accent properties similar to that of the Arabic, more qualities to be analyzed, etc. It is also important to bear in mind that these data capture just one instant (or at least, one survey-length instant) in a listener‘s perception. Bucholtz and Hall (2005) describe the process of stance accretion, the slow build-up of features into an identity that is both constructed by a speaker and assigned by a listener. In a given interaction, the listener does not assign a value judgment and then stop; he or she continues to do throughout, and each interaction builds on the next. The combination of a priori knowledge about a speaker and the listener‘s personal experience could play a powerful role in determining the perception of an accent (or indeed, any speech variation), necessitating a more expansive diachronic study. In that regard, it would be fascinating to trace the complete process of a listener‘s attribution of qualities to a particular accent, from first contact onward (although I can‘t imagine how such a study would be possible, given the magnitude of that process).

Conclusions

This study is intended as an initial step in addressing the purely linguistic prejudice faced by

Arab-Americans based on their language and accent that exists. By gathering relevant data about the opinions of the majority population, analyzing it statistically, and comparing the results with the common stereotypes and misconceptions present in mainstream culture, it is possible to see the direction in which listeners‘ attitudes lie. The data support the hypothesis that there are

statistically significant correlations between particular categories of respondents or speakers

(along demographic lines), and a higher or lower rating of the speakers‘ qualities (overall and individually), but I want to stress that the statistical significance does not entail the degree of prejudice. This study merely illustrates that listener bias can, in certain instances, be predicated on particular demographic groups the listener belongs to. Although individual respondents may have liberally assigned 1‘s and 5‘s to the speakers, none of the means for an entire group‘s rating of a speaker fell outside the central range of 2.5 to 3.5.

The differences between a Southern or Spanish accent and an Arabic accent level out as the sample sizes increase, implying that the overall prejudice based on language alone is rather small. (Given the Likert scale, how far does one have to go from ―neutral‖ before a response can be declared overwhelmingly positive or negative?) It is encouraging that judgments of this kind may not be as severe or overt as those based on visual cues or a priori knowledge, as in the cases outlined by Zogby 2001. However, even a comparatively small prejudice can build upon or index others, so even the smaller components of overall bias must be addressed. My hope is that explicitly stating where that bias lies, and which groups have more significantly negative attitudes overall, will enable people to find ways to stop themselves from making those judgments. If they realize what specific effects a particular accent is having on their attitudes towards a speaker, they will be at least be able to acknowledge it. A number of respondents from the survey ended their participation with free-response comments that displayed an impact the survey had on their self-perception:

- “Filling this out has made me feel really stereotyped/biased.” (white female, 24)

- “It seems to be a bit stereotyped. Made me feel like I was judging people about their personal virtues just by their voice. I did not like deciding these things about them.” (white female, 25)

- “Interesting. I was surprized [sic] by how easily I drew conclusions about people based solely on the recording. One impression is that I viewed people more positively when they spoke more rapidly...drew negative conclusions from hesitation or slow speech. Another impression is that I viewed more favorable individuals who were not speaking English at all compared to someone who was speaking heavily-accented English.” (white male, 54)

- “I never thought I profiled in any way but was a bit surprised at my answers, which I believe show prejudice and some discomfort with non-English speaking persons. Thank you for the opportunity to participate. I learned something about myself.” (white female, 63)

If nothing else, these respondents are now more aware of the attitudes they hold, however subconsciously. They will be able to recognize when they are making these linguistic judgments, and to give them more thought to determine why they are happening and how to overcome them.

Examining language attitudes and opinions is also important because it uses linguistic techniques to make a difference outside the walls of the university. While I‘ll leave it to other researchers to determine how best to apply these data (e.g. refining curricula for students to increase their exposure to accents, providing intercultural trainings in the workplace designed to demonstrate any biased feelings one speaker may have towards another, presenting more positive role models in the media, etc.), it is apparent that a difference in how an individual‘s personal qualities are perceived based on their voice can affect a listener‘s interactions with him or her.

The interviews with Arabic speakers showed just how negative those interactions can become; these data can help mitigate that prejudice. True freedom from accent bias would mean that everyone would rate every speaker equally for every quality, or at least have no bias predicated on the way they sound. We are capable of overcoming our own wariness of others: bearing the results of this study in mind, we can address and help put an end to the expression of negative attitudes that keep the world from being a more understanding place.

APPENDIX A: Survey (Page One)

Anonymous Survey: Linguistic Perception of Accented English in the USA

You are invited to participate in a research study titled ―Linguistic Perception of Accented English in the USA‖. This study is being conducted by Greg Niedt, a graduate student at Georgetown, for a thesis on how accent affects the way listeners perceive speech.

Participation in this study is entirely voluntary at all times. You can choose not to participate at all or to leave the study at any time. Regardless of your decision, there will be no effect on your relationship with the researcher or any other consequences.

You are being asked to take part in this study only if you are a native English-speaking American; the study focuses on the perceptions of your population.

If you agree to participate, you will be asked to fill out a survey in which you will rate what you feel are the personal qualities of different speakers based solely on sound clips. There are two sentences being analyzed both in English and in translation:

 "My brother Peter is very clever; he was a student at Georgetown for just over three years." AND  "Charlie bought a ring to propose to his girlfriend; I think she'll accept, God willing."

The survey should take around 20 minutes to complete, and you will be asked to enter demographic information at the end. The survey will be completed entirely online, and the results will be sent only to the researcher.

All of your responses to this survey will remain anonymous and cannot be linked to you in any way. No identifying information about you will be collected at any point during the study, and your survey will be identified only with a random number. Once you submit your completed survey, there will be no way to withdraw your responses from the study because the survey contains no identifying information.

Study data will be kept in digital format on the researcher‘s computer. Access to digital data will be password protected. Only the researcher will have access to the data.

There are no risks associated with this study. While you will not experience any direct benefits from participation, information collected in this study may benefit others in the future by helping the researcher to collect information on speech perception that may eventually benefit others.

If you have any questions regarding the survey or this research project in general, please contact the principal investigator, Greg Niedt, at gjn5 (at) georgetown (dot) edu or his faculty advisor, Dr. Robert Podesva, at rjp39 (at) georgetown (dot) edu. If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Georgetown University IRB at (202) 687-6553 or irboard (at) georgetown (dot) edu.

By completing and submitting this survey, you are indicating your consent to participate in this study.

Survey (Page Two)

There are twenty questions to this survey. Each sound clip is a matter of seconds in length. Listen to the sound clip, then rate the speaker's qualities based on his or her voice. Don't think about it too carefully; there is no "right" or "wrong" answer for these questions, and first impressions are everything! Please fill out each ranking for each question.

(This format was repeated for all twenty sound clips.)

Survey (Page Three)

Thank you for completing the questions! Please enter the demographic information and any comments below before submitting the survey. This information is necessary for analysis of the data; although the answers are free response, please indicate the following in a way that will be clear to the researcher.

Age: Gender: Racial or ethnic background: Hometown (city, state): Current town (city, state): Length of residence in current town: Occupation:

- How often do you read news? What are your primary sources for the news?

- Do you have contact with any speakers of foreign languages, particularly Arabic or Spanish, or with regional accents, particularly Southern USA? Are they acquaintances, friends, significant others? How often do you interact with them?

- How do you identify politically (conservative, liberal, etc.)? Religiously?

- Please share any other comments you may have about the study:

Thanks again! Please click the button below to submit the survey. Note that when you click the survey, the form provider ("Mail Maniac") will ask if the fields have been entirely filled in, and then may ask you to pass a spam filter.

APPENDIX B: Survey Versions and Order of Sound Clips

Clip Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Version 4 1 EN♂ Charlie AR♀ Karlus EN♀ Charlie AR♂ Charlie 2 EN♀ Peter SP♂ Pedro SP♂ Peter SP♀ Peter 3 SP♂ Charlie SP♀ Charlie AR♀ Charlie SP♂ Carlos 4 AR♀ Peter AR♂ Peter EN♂ Peter AR♀ Boutros 5 AR♂ Charlie EN♂ Charlie SP♀ Carlos AR♂ Karlus 6 SP♀ Peter EN♀ Peter AR♂ Boutros SP♀ Pedro 7 SP♂ Carlos SP♂ Charlie AR♀ Karlus SP♂ Peter 8 AR♀ Boutros AR♀ Peter SP♂ Pedro AR♀ Charlie 9 AR♂ Karlus AR♂ Charlie SP♀ Charlie EN♂ Peter 10 SP♀ Pedro SP♀ Peter AR♂ Peter SP♀ Carlos

11 EN♀ Charlie SP♂ Carlos EN♂ Charlie EN♀ Charlie 12 SP♂ Peter AR♀ Boutros EN♀ Peter AR♂ Boutros 13 AR♀ Charlie AR♂ Karlus SP♂ Charlie AR♀ Karlus 14 EN♂ Peter SP♀ Pedro AR♀ Peter SP♂ Pedro 15 SP♀ Carlos EN♀ Charlie AR♂ Charlie SP♀ Charlie 16 AR♂ Boutros SP♂ Peter SP♀ Peter AR♂ Peter 17 AR♀ Karlus AR♀ Charlie SP♂ Carlos EN♂ Charlie 18 SP♂ Pedro EN♂ Peter AR♀ Boutros EN♀ Peter 19 SP♀ Charlie SP♀ Carlos AR♂ Karlus SP♂ Charlie 20 AR♂ Peter AR♂ Boutros SP♀ Pedro AR♀ Peter

This table shows the order of sound clips in each version of the survey. EN, SP, and AR represent English, Spanish, and Arabic speaker, respectively; the male or female symbol indicate speaker‘s sex. The name indicates which sentence was being elicited, either the ―Charlie‖ sentence or the ―Peter‖ sentence. ―Carlos‖ and ―Pedro‖ indicate when those sentences were elicited in Spanish, while ―Karlus‖ and ―Boutros‖ indicate when they were elicited in Arabic.

All Arabic-accented English sentences have been boldfaced.

APPENDIX C: Respondent Pool (n = 234) broken down by Demographic Category

Category Group n Sex Female 171 Male 63 Race1 Nonwhite 34 White 200 US Origin Alaska/Hawaii 2 California 28 Great Lakes (IL, IN, MI, MN, western NY/PA, OH, WI) 20 Mid-Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NYC, PA, northern VA) 129 Midwest (IA, KS, MO, ND, NK, SD) 0 New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, upstate NY, RI, VT) 17 Northwest (ID, MT, OR, WA, WY) 2 South (AL, AR, LA, MS, OK, TX) 8 Southeast (FL, GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV) 25 Southwest (AZ, CO, NM, NV, UT) 3 News habits Reads/watches news daily 137 Reads/watches news multiple times a week 39 Reads/watches news weekly 17 Reads/watches news less than once a week 28 Unknown 13 Main news sources Internet 126 Newspapers 23 Radio/television 30 Multiple sources 46 Unknown 9 Arabic exposure Does not know/rarely interacts with Arabic speakers 170 Has some acquaintance with Arabic speakers 31 Frequent/close interaction with Arabic speakers 33 Other accents2 Does not know/rarely interacts with accented speakers 26 Has some acquaintance with accented speakers 59 Frequent/close interaction with accented speakers 149 Political identification Libertarian 9 Left /liberal 129 Centre-left 29 Centre 38 Centre-right 10 Right/conservative 13 Unknown 5 Religious identification Agnostic/non-religious/spiritual 75 Atheist 26 Buddhist 3 Eastern Orthodox 1 Jewish 11 Neo-pagan/Wiccan 5 Protestant Christian 39 Roman Catholic 46 Unknown 28 Survey version Version 1 34 Version 2 78 Version 3 51 Version 4 71

1: Due to the small sample size of individual self-reported nonwhite races, these have been grouped into one nonwhite category. It should be noted that no survey respondent self-identified as Arab-American. 2: Exposure to Arabic and other accents/languages were treated as one free response question, and separated in this manner during data analysis. This was done so that the focus on Arabic would not be apparent to the survey taker.

APPENDIX D: Demographic factors and factor groups in least-squares regression; graphs of non-statistically significant responses for Arabic accent by demographic group

Parameter Estimates: laidback Effect Tests: laidback

Mean ratings for US Origin: (0 = Alaska/Hawaii, 1 = New England, 2 = Mid-Atlantic, 3 = Southeast, 4 = South, 5 = Great Lakes, 7 = Southwest, 8 = California, 9 = Northwest)

Mean ratings for News habits (c = weekly, v = less than weekly, x = multiple times a week, z = daily) News sources: (b = Internet, B = multiple sources, m = mass media (radio/TV), n = newspapers)

Mean ratings for Contact with Arabic (i = frequent/close contact, o = occasional contact, p = rare/no contact) Contact with other languages/accents (I = frequent/close contact, O = occasional contact, P = rare/no contact)

Mean ratings for Survey version

Parameter Estimates: religious Effect Tests: religious

Mean ratings for US Origin: (0 = Alaska/Hawaii, 1 = New England, 2 = Mid-Atlantic, 3 = Southeast, 4 = South, 5 = Great Lakes, 7 = Southwest, 8 = California, 9 = Northwest)

Mean ratings for Political affiliation: (f = libertarian, g = left, h = centre-left, j = moderate, k = centre-right, l = right)

Mean ratings for Religious affiliation: (a = Catholic, d = Jewish, D = Buddhist, s = Protestant, S = neo-pagan, y = atheist, Y = agnostic)

Mean ratings for News habits: (c = weekly, v = less than weekly, x = multiple times a week, z = daily) News sources: (b = Internet, B = multiple sources, m = mass media (radio/TV), n = newspapers)

Mean ratings for Survey version

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