Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:50:13.337Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children's perception of dialect variation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2013

LAURA WAGNER ,
CYNTHIA G. CLOPPER  and
JOHN K. PATE
LAURA WAGNER*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
CYNTHIA G. CLOPPER
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
JOHN K. PATE
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
*
Address for correspondence: Laura Wagner, Department of Psychology, 1835 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210. tel: 614-688-3260; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A speaker's regional dialect is a rich source of information about that person. Two studies examined five- to six-year-old children's perception of regional dialect: Can they perceive differences among dialects? Have they made meaningful social connections to specific dialects? Experiment 1 asked children to categorize speakers into groups based on their accent; Experiment 2 asked them to match speakers to (un)familiar cultural items. Each child was tested with two of the following: the child's Home dialect, a Regional variant of that dialect, and a Second-Language variant. Results showed that children could successfully categorize only with a Home vs. Second-Language dialect contrast, but could reliably link cultural items with either a Home vs. Second-Language or a Regional vs. Second-Language dialect contrast. These results demonstrate five- to six-year-old children's developing perceptual skill with dialect, and suggest that they have a gradient representation of dialect variation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , September 2014 , pp. 1062 - 1084
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

Special thanks go to the Center for Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, OH for their generosity in allowing us to work with the children there; to Richa Deshmukh and Melissa Allen for their help in recording the dialect samples; to Sara Brummel, Kristin Rohrbeck, Sarah Bibyk, Cartha Sexton, Oxana Skorniakova, Emily Dorrian, Brittany Baker, Courtney Davenport, Kerrianne Morrison, and Melissa Forney for their assistance with this project; and to the Lacqueys reading group for their comments and input.

References

REFERENCES

Berthele, R. (2002). Learning a second dialect: a model of idiolectal dissonance. Multilingua 21, 327–44.Google Scholar
Bonatti, L. L., Peña, M., Nespor, M. & Mehler, J. (2005). Linguistic constraints on statistical computations: the role of consonants and vowels in continuous speech processing. Psychological Science 16, 451–59.Google Scholar
Butler, J., Floccia, C., Goslin, J. & Panneton, R. (2011). Infants' discrimination of familiar and unfamiliar accents in speech. Infancy 16, 392–417.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K. (1992). Dialect acquisition. Language 68, 673–705. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/416850.Google Scholar
Clarke, C. M. & Garrett, M. F. (2004). Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116, 3647–58.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G. & Pisoni, D. B. (2004). Homebodies and army brats: some effects of early linguistic experience and residential history on dialect categorization. Language Variation and Change 16, 31–48.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G. & Pisoni, D. B. (2007). Free classification of regional dialects of American English. Journal of Phonetics 35, 421–38.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., Rohrbeck, K. L. & Wagner, L. (2012). Perception of dialect variation by young adults with High-Functioning Autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 42, 740–54.Google Scholar
Cristia, A., Seidl, A., Vaughn, C., Schmale, R., Bradlow, A. & Floccia, C. (2012). Linguistic processing of accented speech across the lifespan. Frontiers in Psychology, Article 479. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00479.Google Scholar
Deser, T. (1989). Dialect transmission and variation: an acoustic analysis of vowels in six urban Detroit families. York Papers in Linguistics 13, 115–28.Google Scholar
Finegan, E. & Rickford, J. R. (2004). Language in the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Floccia, C., Butler, J., Girard, F. & Goslin, J. (2009). Categorization of regional and foreign accent in 5 to 7-year-old British children. International Journal of Behavioral Development 33, 366–75.Google Scholar
Foulkes, P., Docherty, G., Tillotson, J. & Watt, D. (2006). On the scope of phonological learning: issues arising from socially-structured variation. Laboratory Phonology 8, 393–421.Google Scholar
Gargesh, R. (2004). Indian English: phonology. In Schneider, E. W., Burridge, K., Kortmann, B., Mesthrie, R. & Upton, C. (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English, Volume 1. 992–1002. Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Giles, H. (1970). Evaluative reactions to accents. Educational Review 22, 211–27.Google Scholar
Girard, F., Floccia, C. & Goslin, J. (2008). Perception and awareness of accents in young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 26, 409–33.Google Scholar
Goslin, J., Duffy, H. & Floccia, C. (2012). An ERP investigation of regional and foreign accent processing. Brain & Language 122, 92–102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirschfeld, L. A. & Gelman, S. A. (1997). What young children think about the relationship between language variation and social difference. Cognitive Development 12, 213–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerswill, P. & Williams, A. (2000). Creating a new town koine: children and language change in Milton Keynes. Language in Society 29, 65–115. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4168984.Google Scholar
Kinzler, K. D. & DeJesus, J. (2013). Northern=smart and Southern=nice: the development of accent attitudes in the U.S. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 66(6), 1146–58.Google Scholar
Kinzler, K. D., Dupoux, E. & Spelke, E. S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, 12577–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kinzler, K. D., Shutts, K., DeJesus, J. & Spelke, E. S. (2009). Accent trumps race in guiding children's social preferences. Social Cognition 27, 623–34.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1964). Stages in the acquisition of standard English. In Shuy, R., Davis, A. & Hogan, R. (eds.), Social dialects and language learning, 77–104. Champaign, IL.: National Council of Teachers of English.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (2012). What is to be learned? In Putz, M., Robinson, J. & Reif, M. (eds.), Special issue: Cognitive Sociolinguistics: Social and cultural variation in cognition and language use. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 10, 265–93.Google Scholar
Labov, W., Ash, S. & Boberg, C. (2006). The atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Long, D. & Preston, D. R. (eds.) (2002). Handbook of perceptual dialectology, volume 2. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Luhman, R. (1990). Appalachian English stereotypes: language attitudes in Kentucky. Language in Society 19, 331–48.Google Scholar
Masica, C. (1972). The sound system of Indian English (Monograph no. 7). Hyderabad: Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages.Google Scholar
Maxwell, O. & Fletcher, J. (2009). Acoustic and durational properties of Indian English vowels. World Englishes 28, 52–69.Google Scholar
Maye, J., Aslin, R. N. & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2008). The weckud wetch of the wast: lexical adaptation to a novel accent. Cognitive Science 32, 543–62.Google Scholar
Nathan, L., Wells, B. & Donlan, C. (1998). Children's comprehension of unfamiliar regional accents: a preliminary investigation. Journal of Child Language 25, 343–65.Google Scholar
Nazzi, T., Jusczyk, P. W. & Johnson, E. K. (2000). Language discrimination of English-learning 6-month-olds: effects of rhythm and familiarity. Journal of Memory and Language 43, 1–19.Google Scholar
Payne, A. (1980). Factors controlling the acquisition of the Philadelphia dialect by out-of-state children. In Labov, W. (ed.), Locating language in time and space, 143–78. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Preston, D. R. (ed.) (1993). American dialect research. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, J. & Labov, W. (1995). Learning to talk Philadelphian: acquisition of short a by preschool children. Language Variation and Change 7, 101–12.Google Scholar
Sadis, K. & Roberts, J. (2006). Learning to talk native: listeners' perception of speech from three dialect areas. Working Papers in Linguistics, 15–23. Philadelphia: UPenn Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Smith, J., Durham, M. & Fortune, L. (2007). ‘Mam, my trousers is fa'in doon!’: community, caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change 19, 63–99.Google Scholar
Smith, J., Durham, M. & Fortune, L. (2009). Universal and dialect-specific pathways of acquisition: caregivers, children, and t/d deletion. Language Variation and Change 21, 69–95.Google Scholar
Stanford, J. N. (2008). Child dialect acquisition: new perspectives on parent/peer influence. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12, 567–96.Google Scholar
Starks, D. & Bayard, D. (2002). Individual variation in the acquisition of postvocalic /r/: day care and sibling order as potential variables. American Speech 77, 184–94.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, S. A. & Molfenter, S. (2007). How'd you get that accent?: acquiring a second dialect of the same language. Language in Society 36, 649–75.Google Scholar
Thomas, E. R. (2001). An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. W. (1999). The dialects of England. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. W. & Hannah, J. (2002). International English: a guide to the varieties of standard English. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Wagner, L., Greene-Havas, M. & Gillespie, R. (2010). Development in children's comprehension of linguistic register. Child Development 81, 1678–85.Google Scholar