Howard Giles presented 5 groups of students with an identical set of arguments against capital punishment. 1 group received a written presentation, and the other 4 received an oral presentation. One was presented by an RP speaker, one by a Somerset speaker, one by South Welsh speaker and the last by a Birmingham speaker.
Firstly the students were asked how impressed they were with the competence of the presentations.
Firstly the students were asked how impressed they were with the competence of the presentations.
- The RP and the written presentations were deemed the most impressive
- The Birmingham presentation was deemed the least impressive
Then, Giles assessed the persuasiveness of the speakers by asking the student's opinions of Capital Punishment before and after the presentations.
- Regional accents scored the highest
- Those hearing regional speakers were more likely to change their mind than those hearing the RP speaker or reading the printed presentation
It can therefore be concluded that RP is deemed more professional an competent than regional accents, but regional accents are more persuasive than RP accents.
Matched-guise technique
Giles often asked participants to listen to the same speaker using multiple accents to determine what the attitudes towards the different accents were, barring the content or delivery of the speech. This technique was used by Lambert in 1960.
1975 - Same speaker spoke about psychology, once in RP and once in Birmingham accent
Teenagers rated the RP speaker higher, despite the speech being the same
Similar studies
Accents of Guilt - Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks (2002)
119 participants listened to an exchange between a British male criminal suspect and a British male policeman. Using the Matched-guise technique, this exchange was varied to produce a 2 (accent type: Birmingham/RP) 2 (race of suspect: Black/White) 2 (crime type: blue collar/white collar) independent-groups design. The results suggested that the suspect was rated significantly more guilty when he employed a Birmingham accent rather than an RP accent and attributions of guilt were associated with the suspect's perceived superiority and social attractiveness.
Neuliep and Speten-Hansen (2014)
93 male and female undergraduate students were recruited and 46 randomly assigned to an experimental group and 47 to a control group. All participants were native speakers of English.
In the experiment, participants in both groups completed a test to see how ethnocentric they were - questions included "My culture should be the role model for the world" and "I have little respect for the values and customs of other cultures" and were answered on a 5 point scale - 1 being "disagree" and 5 being "agree".
http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/image-of-language-diversity-from-tobias.html
Matched-guise technique
Giles often asked participants to listen to the same speaker using multiple accents to determine what the attitudes towards the different accents were, barring the content or delivery of the speech. This technique was used by Lambert in 1960.
1975 - Same speaker spoke about psychology, once in RP and once in Birmingham accent
Teenagers rated the RP speaker higher, despite the speech being the same
Similar studies
Accents of Guilt - Dixon, Mahoney and Cocks (2002)
119 participants listened to an exchange between a British male criminal suspect and a British male policeman. Using the Matched-guise technique, this exchange was varied to produce a 2 (accent type: Birmingham/RP) 2 (race of suspect: Black/White) 2 (crime type: blue collar/white collar) independent-groups design. The results suggested that the suspect was rated significantly more guilty when he employed a Birmingham accent rather than an RP accent and attributions of guilt were associated with the suspect's perceived superiority and social attractiveness.
Neuliep and Speten-Hansen (2014)
93 male and female undergraduate students were recruited and 46 randomly assigned to an experimental group and 47 to a control group. All participants were native speakers of English.
In the experiment, participants in both groups completed a test to see how ethnocentric they were - questions included "My culture should be the role model for the world" and "I have little respect for the values and customs of other cultures" and were answered on a 5 point scale - 1 being "disagree" and 5 being "agree".
http://linguistics-research-digest.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/image-of-language-diversity-from-tobias.html
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