Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Journal of English Linguistics, 48 (1), 2019, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Journal of English Linguistics page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/eng on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Speaker gender and salience in sociolinguistic speech perception
T2 - GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English
AU - Alderton, Roy
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Journal of English Linguistics, 48 (1), 2019, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Journal of English Linguistics page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/eng on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - Listeners’ perceptions of sound changes may be influenced by priming them with social information about the speaker. It is not clear, however, whether this occurs for sociolinguistic variables that pass below the level of awareness. This article investigates whether visual speaker gender affects the perception of GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English, a sound change that is led by young women yet does not fulfil criteria for sociolinguistic salience. Participants from across the United Kingdom completed a word identification experiment based on a gender-ambiguous synthesised FLEECE-GOOSE continuum while primed with an image of a man’s or a woman’s face. The study did not find a significant main effect of priming, but men identified fronter tokens as GOOSE when primed with a woman’s face. I argue that sociolinguistic priming effects may be over-stated and that future priming experiments should be designed with maximal statistical power where possible.
AB - Listeners’ perceptions of sound changes may be influenced by priming them with social information about the speaker. It is not clear, however, whether this occurs for sociolinguistic variables that pass below the level of awareness. This article investigates whether visual speaker gender affects the perception of GOOSE-fronting in Standard Southern British English, a sound change that is led by young women yet does not fulfil criteria for sociolinguistic salience. Participants from across the United Kingdom completed a word identification experiment based on a gender-ambiguous synthesised FLEECE-GOOSE continuum while primed with an image of a man’s or a woman’s face. The study did not find a significant main effect of priming, but men identified fronter tokens as GOOSE when primed with a woman’s face. I argue that sociolinguistic priming effects may be over-stated and that future priming experiments should be designed with maximal statistical power where possible.
KW - gender
KW - salience
KW - sociophonetics
KW - speech perception
KW - visual priming
U2 - 10.1177/0075424219896400
DO - 10.1177/0075424219896400
M3 - Journal article
VL - 48
SP - 72
EP - 96
JO - Journal of English Linguistics
JF - Journal of English Linguistics
SN - 0075-4242
IS - 1
ER -