Abstract
Three linguists reliably judged the accentedness of 32 Mexican-Americans and four Anglo male readers using a 7-point Preliminary Accentedness Scale. Next, the judges provided reliable assessments of the relative frequency of 18 types of accented pronunciation for nine of the speakers. An Accentedness Index was developed by averaging the relative frequencies over the 18 pronunciations. Accentedness measures produced by the linguists for the nine test speakers were compared with ratings of status, solidarity, and accent given by naive raters in another experiment (Brennan and Brennan, 1978). The Accentedness Index was a significant predictor of the Preliminary Accentedness Scale, of accentedness assessments by the naive listeners, and of status judgments. Pronunciation types were significant predictors both of accent and of status. Results are discussed in terms of validation of the concept of accentedness. Future use of accentedness measures to investigate spontaneous speech and attitudes of listeners toward their own speech is suggested.
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Brennan, E.M., Brennan, J.S. Measurements of accent and attitude toward Mexican-American speech. J Psycholinguist Res 10, 487–501 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01076735
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01076735