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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 547

Part of Session 171: Experimental methods in the study of social meaning (Other abstracts in this session)

Perceptual Divergence within Berlin

Authors: Jannedy, Stefanie (1); Weirich, Melanie (2)
Submitted by: Jannedy, Stefanie (ZAS Berlin, Germany)

Perceptual divergence effects along the lines of national identity were first described by Niedzielski (1999) and replicated by Hay & Drager (2010). It describes the observation that listeners categorize identical stimuli differentially in dependence to varying indexical information presented subtly as part of an experimental set up. Auer & Dirim (2004) observed a synchronic alternation of /ç/ and /ʃ/ in a variety spoken by young multi-ethnic speakers in urban areas of Germany (Hamburg). We have followed up on this observation and conducted production and perception studies in Berlin where we also find larger multi-ethnic neighborhoods in which this alternation is quite pervasive. Kreuzberg is such a hood located next to the city center and generally Berliners seem to have pre-conceptualizations towards people from this hood. Other districts such as Zehlendorf remain largely ‘white spots on a map’ (Preston, 2010), when we asked students about their impressions of how people speak in Berlin.
     We tested if perceptual divergence effects can also be found in Berlin. A forced choice identification task was designed to test listeners’ categorization of stimuli from a 13 step acoustic continuum ranging from a palatal fricative as in /fɪçtə/ 'spruce' to a postalveolar fricative as in /fɪʃtə/ 'fished'. 99 listeners were instructed to press the appropriate response button for each stimulus they heard. They were tested in three different CONDITIONS: group 1 saw the word Kreuzberg (KB) written on the response box, group 2 saw the word Zehlendorf (ZD), and group 3 did not see a label. Listener’s attention was implicitly and subtly directed to the group label under the assumption that s/he would derive inferences from that. For a subgroup of 22 listeners, we have measured the time lag (reaction time, RT) between the onset of the acoustic stimulus and the response to test for processing time differences for the three conditions.
    A linear mixed effects model with response type as the dependent variable revealed significantly more 'fischte' (7) judgements in CONDITION KB than in ZD (<.05), but no difference between KB and NO or ZD and NO. An analysis of the RT showed that listeners in KB needed significantly more time compared to those in ZD (p<.05). RT also differed between NO and ZD (p<.05) but not between NO and KB. Listeners seem to process the stimuli faster with a reference model (ZD) than with NO reference. Longer RTs for KB are explained by the need to access the lexical information in addition to processing indexical information. The interpretation of fine phonetic detail seems also phonological in the sense that it can be recognized by listeners to categorize speech stimuli differently in dependence on who they believed the speaker is.


References:
Auer, P. & Dirim, I. (2004) Türkisch sprechen nicht nur die Türken.De Gruyter.
Hay, J. & Drager, K. (2010) Stuffed toys and speech perception. Linguistics 48(4): 865-892.
Niedzielski, N. (1999) The effect of social information on the perception of sociolinguistic variables. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18(1): 1-18.
Preston, D. R. (2010) Language with an Attitude. In Meyerhoff M. & E. Schleef (eds.) The Routlege Sociolinguistics Reader, 112 – 131.