TY - GEN

T1 - It's not phonetic aesthetics that drives dialect preference

T2 - the case of Swiss German

AU - Leemann, Adrian

AU - Kolly, Marie-José

AU - Nolan, Francis

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - Dialect stereotypes are widespread. Birmingham English is perceived as ugly, Parisian French ascultivated. In Switzerland, Bern and Thurgau Swiss German lie on opposite ends of the attractiveness spectrum. In the present study, we examined how Swiss German, French, and English listeners – the latter two being unfamiliar with the dialects – rated the phonetic aesthetics of these two Swiss German dialects. In a matched-guise design, listeners judged how pleasing stimuli read by a bidialectal speaker were. Results revealed that unfamiliar listeners didnot show a preference while familiar listeners strongly preferred Bern Swiss German. Theattractiveness of a dialect thus seems to be largely driven by the social attributes of its speakers and less so by its phonetic aesthetics. The realization of /r/ as apical or dorsal, however, strongly influenced preference judgments in familiar listeners

AB - Dialect stereotypes are widespread. Birmingham English is perceived as ugly, Parisian French ascultivated. In Switzerland, Bern and Thurgau Swiss German lie on opposite ends of the attractiveness spectrum. In the present study, we examined how Swiss German, French, and English listeners – the latter two being unfamiliar with the dialects – rated the phonetic aesthetics of these two Swiss German dialects. In a matched-guise design, listeners judged how pleasing stimuli read by a bidialectal speaker were. Results revealed that unfamiliar listeners didnot show a preference while familiar listeners strongly preferred Bern Swiss German. Theattractiveness of a dialect thus seems to be largely driven by the social attributes of its speakers and less so by its phonetic aesthetics. The realization of /r/ as apical or dorsal, however, strongly influenced preference judgments in familiar listeners

M3 - Conference contribution/Paper

BT - Proceedings of ICPhS 2015

ER -