Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:27:23.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic marker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2018

Annette D'Onofrio*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University

Abstract

This paper explores the relation between controlled and automatic perceptions of a sociolinguistic variable that yields no metalinguistic commentary—a marker (Labov, 1972). Two experiments examine links between the backed trap vowel and its social meanings. The first, a matched guise task, measures social evaluations of the feature in a relatively controlled, introspective task. In the second, two measures are used that access different points in online processing and different degrees of listener control: (a) lexical categorization of an ambiguous stimulus, measured by a mouse click, and (b) automatic, early responses to this ambiguous stimulus, measured by eye movements. While listeners perceptually link trap-backing with social information in all three measures, specific social effects differ across the measures. Findings illustrate that the task and time course of a response influence how listeners link a linguistic marker with social information, even when this sociolinguistic knowledge is below the level of conscious awareness.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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

I am grateful to Penny Eckert and Teresa Pratt for feedback on this work, as well as to Rob Podesva and Meghan Sumner for comments on the design and analyses of the eye-tracking study included here. I am also grateful to Kevin McGowan for lending his voice and to Ed King for advice in the eye-tracking setup and analysis. Audiences at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 2014 in Chicago, Linguistic Society of America 2015 in Portland, Stanford University's Sociolunch, and Northwestern University's Sound Lab also provided valuable feedback on earlier stages of this work. I would also like to thank five anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions that very much improved this article.

References

REFERENCES

Allopenna, Paul D., Magnuson, James S., & Tanenhaus, Michael K. (1998). Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and Language 38:419439.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Babel, Anna M. (2016). Awareness and control in sociolinguistic research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bargh, John, & Chartrand, Tanya. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist 54:462479.Google Scholar
Becker, Kara, Aden, Anna, Best, Katelyn, & Jacobson, Haley. (2016). In Evans, B., Fridland, V., Kendall, T., & Wassink, A. (eds.), Publication of the American Dialect Society: Speech in the Western states. Vol. 101. Durham: Duke University Press. 107134.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & Weenink, David. 2011. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer, version 5.2.17. 1992–2011. Available at: http://www.praat.org. Accessed May 24, 2016.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. (2007). Accent, (ING), and the social logic of listener perceptions. American Speech 82:3264.Google Scholar
Campbell-Kibler, Kathryn. (2012). The implicit association test and sociolinguistic meaning. Lingua 122:753763.Google Scholar
Dahan, Delphine, Drucker, Sarah J., & Scarborough, Rebecca A. (2008). Talker adaptations in speech perception: Adjusting the signal or the representations? Cognition 108:710718.Google Scholar
Devine, Patricia G. (1989) Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56:518.Google Scholar
Donald, Kevin, Kikusawa, Ritsuko, Gaul, Karen, & Holton, Gary. (2004). Language. In Goggans, J. & Difranco, A. (eds.) The PacificrRegion: The Greenwood encyclopedia of American regional cultures. Westport: Greenwood Press. 281.Google Scholar
D'Onofrio, Annette. (2015a). Perceiving personae: Effects of social information on perceptions of TRAP-backing. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 21:3139.Google Scholar
D'Onofrio, Annette. (2015b). Persona-based information shapes linguistic perception: Valley Girls and California vowels. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19:241256.Google Scholar
D'Onofrio, Annette, Eckert, Penelope, Podesva, Robert J., Pratt, Teresa, & Van Hofwegen, Janneke. (2016). The low vowels in California's Central Valley. In Evans, B., Fridland, V., Kendall, T., & Wassink, A. (eds.), Publication of the American Dialect Society: Speech in the Western states. Vol. 101. Durham: Duke University Press. 1132.Google Scholar
Drager, Katie, & Kirtley, M. Joelle. (2016). Awareness, salience, and stereotypes in exemplar-based models of speech production and perception. In Babel, A. (ed.), Awareness and control in sociolinguistic research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 124.Google Scholar
Driscoll, Anna, & Lape, Emma. (2015). Reversal of the Northern Cities Shift in Syracuse, New York. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 21:4147.Google Scholar
Evans, Jonathan St. B. T. (2006). The heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning: Extension and evaluation. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 13:378395.Google Scholar
Giles, Howard. 1970. Evaluative reactions to accents. Educational Review 22:211227.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, Warren, Paul, & Drager, Katie. (2005). Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics 34:458484.Google Scholar
Hinton, Leanne, Moonwomon, Birch, Bremner, Sue, Luthin, Herb, Van Clay, Mary, Lerner, Jean, & Corcoran, Hazel. (1987). It's not just the valley girls: A study of California English. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 13:117128.Google Scholar
Huettig, Falk, Rommers, Joost, & Meyer, Antje S. (2011). Using the visual world paradigm to study language processing: A review and critical evaluation. Acta Psychologica 137:151171.Google Scholar
Johnson, Keith. (2006). Resonance in an exemplar-based lexicon: The emergence of social identity and phonology. Journal of Phonetics 34:485499.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara, Andrus, Jennifer, & Danielson, Andrew E. (2006). Mobility, indexicality and the enregisterment of “Pittsburghese.” Journal of English Linguistics 34:77104.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, & Frederick, Shane. (2002). A model of heuristic judgment. In Holyoak, K. & Morrison, R. (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of thinking and reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 267294.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, & Tversky, Amos. (1972). Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness. Cognitive Psychology 3:430454.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Robert, & Grama, James. (2012). Chain shifting and centralization in California vowels: An acoustic analysis. American Speech 87:3956.Google Scholar
Koops, Christian, Gentry, Elizabeth, & Pantos, Andrew. (2008). The effect of perceived speaker age on the perception of PIN and PEN vowels in Houston, Texas. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 36:91101.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, & Boberg, Charles. 2006. The atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology, and sound change. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lambert, Wallace, Hodgson, Richard, Gardner, Robert, & Fillenbaum, Samuel. (1960). Evaluational reactions to spoken language. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60:4451.Google Scholar
Levon, Erez, & Fox, Sue. (2014). Salience and the sociolinguistic monitor: A case study of ING and TH-fronting in Britain. Journal of English Linguistics 42:185217.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Matthew D. (2007). Social cognitive neuroscience: a review of core processes. Annual Review of Psychology 58:259289.Google Scholar
Payne, B. Keith, Burkley, Melissa A., & Stokes, Mark B. (2008). Why do implicit and explicit attitude tests diverge? The role of structural fit. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94:1631.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2001. Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition and contrast. In Bybee, J. and Hopper, P. (eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 137157.Google Scholar
Plichta, Bartlomiej. (2013). Akustyk: Speech analysis and synthesis plug-in for Praat. Available at: http://github.com/akustyk. Accessed October 1, 2012.Google Scholar
Podesva, Robert. J., Hall-Lew, Lauren, Brenier, Jason, Starr, Rebecca, & Lewis, Stacy. (2012). Condoleezza Rice and the sociophonetic construction of identity. In Hernandez-Campoy, J. M. & Cutillas-Espinosa, J. A. (eds.), Style-shifting in public: New perspectives on stylistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 6580.Google Scholar
Pratt, Teresa, & D'Onofrio, Annette. (2017). Jaw setting and the California Vowel Shift in parodic performance. Language in Society 46:283312.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis. (1996). “Whaddayaknow?”: The modes of folk linguistic awareness. Language Awareness 5:4074.Google Scholar
Preston, Dennis. (2010). Variation in language regard. In Zeigler, E., Gilles, P., & Scharloth, J. (eds.), Variatio delectate: Empirische Evidenzen und theoretische Passungen sprachlicher Variation. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 727.Google Scholar
Rayner, Keith. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin 124:372422.Google Scholar
Schneider, Walter, & Shiffrin, Richard M. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing I: Detection, search and attention. Psychological Review 84:166.Google Scholar
Schnoebelen, Tyler, & Kuperman, Victor. (2010). Using Amazon Mechanical Turk for linguistic research. Psihologija 43:441464.Google Scholar
Squires, Lauren. (2013). It don't go both ways: Limited bidirectionality in sociolinguistic perception. Journal of Sociolinguistics 17:200237.Google Scholar
Squires, Lauren. (2016). Processing grammatical differences: Perceiving versus noticing. In Babel, A. M. (ed.), Awareness and control in sociolinguistic research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 80103.Google Scholar
Staum Casasanto, Laura. (2008). Experimental investigations of sociolinguistic knowledge. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Sumner, Meghan, Kim, Seung-Kyung, King, Ed, & McGowan, Kevin. 2014. The socially-weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception. Frontiers in Language Sciences 4:article 1015.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, Michael K. (2007). Spoken language comprehension: Insights from eye movements. In Gaskell, G. (ed.), Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 309326.Google Scholar
Villarreal, Daniel. (2016). The construction of social meaning: A matched-guise investigation of the California Vowel Shift. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Davis.Google Scholar