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The Two Sides of Bilingual Experience
Ethan Kutlu, Holly Redman, Stefanie Wulff
Department of Linguistics, University of Florida
METHODS RESULTS
Participants
DISCUSSION
BACKGROUND
Experimental Design and Tasks
➢The Second Language History Questionnaire (Version 3.0, 2015; Li et al., 2014) was
administered.
➢Following Gullifer & Titone’s (2019) approach, we divided our bilinguals into two
groups (compartmentalized, integrated)
denkutlu@ufl.edu
@ethankutlu
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11. Satone, M. (2017). KKWETC Indian Face Database. International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT)-Volume 54 Number 1.
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14. Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 149-171.
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Context on Bilingualism
•The cognitive and health-related advantages of being bilingual are
extensively documented (Bialystok, 2011).
•The bilingual population in the USA is rising with an increase in first-
and second-generation immigrants.
•However, bilinguals with accents are often discriminated against
(Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010).
•Due to stigmatization towards bilingualism in the USA, currently, we do
not have pipelines to investigate how these individuals maintain their
languages while acquiring English, and how they adapt to their new
social networks.
•This was highlighted as a future public health issue in a 2011 paper in
which Asian immigrants who speak English with an accent were shown
to suffer from early symptoms of depression (Kim et al., 2011).
•Previous research shows that ethnically Chinese Canadians’ speech is
perceived less intelligible and are rated with stronger foreign accents
(Babel & Russell, 2015).
•Another study shows that Chinese-accented English is perceived less
intelligible when presented with a White face (McGowan, 2015).
Context on World Englishes
•According to Kachru’s three circle hypothesis (1980), Englishes around
the world are not perceived in the same manner.
•While inner circle varieties (American English, Australian English,
British English, and Canadian English) are perceived as more
prestigious, outer circle varieties (e.g. Indian English and Nigerian
English) do not have the same representation.
•Another approach to language stereotyping points out these differences
from a racial perspective. Raciolinguistic accounts suggest that
linguistic stereotyping affects non-white communities the most (Flores
& Rosa, 2015).
Bilingualism Meets World Englishes
•Outer circle varieties grow larger bilingual groups. However, due to
linguistic stereotyping, bilinguals of outer circle Englishes are at risk
of facing linguistic discrimination.
Research Questions
1. Does race affect intelligibility and accentedness measures?
2. Does the type of accent affect the aforementioned measures?
3. Does one’s social network affect their perception of accents?
References
Undergraduate students
Sex Age Bilingualism
37 Female Mean = 19
31 compartmentalized
26 Male 32 integrated
Total 63
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Dr. Debra Titone, Mehrgol Tiv, Naomi Vingron, Dr. Jason Gullifer for their comments and input. I also would like to acknowledge Dylan Attlesey, Sophie de Jong, Sabrina Fiske,
and Eva Harvey for their help with data collection.
South Asian Face White Face
Indian English
100
80
60
40
Intelligibility accuracy (%)
South Asian Face White Face
Indian English
9
7
5
3
1
South Asian Face White Face
American English
Foreign accentedness judgments
9 = Heavily accented
Foreign accentedness judgments
9 = Heavily accented
9
7
5
3
1
100
80
60
40
Intelligibility accuracy (%)
Foreign accentedness judgments
9 = Heavily accented
AmE BrE IndE AmE BrE IndE
South Asian Face White Face
South Asian Face White Face
American English
9
7
5
3
1
•Bradlow and Alexander’s (2007)
120 high and low predictable
sentences (60 high predictable)
•American English speakers (2
female)
•British English speakers (2
female)
•Indian English speakers (2
female)
•All sentences were normalized
using Praat
•All sentences were judged by 5
trained linguists for their
alignment with each accent type
•Following McGowan’s (2015)
procedure, +4dB pink noise is
added to make the audio files
harder to understand for
participants
•South Asian images were
taken from the KKWETC
Indian Face Database
(Satone, 2017)
•White images were taken
from the Chicago Face
Database
•All images were presented in
black and white
p<.001
p<.019
p<.001
p<.001
•Intelligibility significantly dropped for South Asian faces
(F (1,62) = 13.2, p <.001).
•The intelligibility scores for both British and Indian English
were reduced compared to American English (F(2, 61)= 27.1
, p<.001) but the intelligibility for British English was
significantly higher compared to Indian English (p = .028).
•There were no group differences (p = .333).
•Faces along with accents impact listeners’
accentedness judgments (F (2, 61)= 7.8, p <.001).
•Indian English and British English were both
judged to be more accented compared to American
English (p < .001).
•There were no group differences (p = .893)
•Our results replicate Babel & Russell (2015)’s findings suggesting that face information changes both accentedness and intelligibility.
•We found that South Asian faces with American English and Indian English were judged as more accented compared to their White counterparts.
•The intelligibility was also significantly lower for South Asian faces compared to all other accents.
•South Asian faces with British English were judged as less accented. According to Associative Propositional Evaluation Model (Gawronski &
Bodenhausen, 2006), implicit and explicit biases are shaped by constant changes in association. Here, Indian English with South Asian faces are
linguistically associated with more negative biases whereas British English with South Asian faces do not have the same association which shows the
interconnectedness of race and language.
•Neither bilingualism nor social networks affected these judgements in Florida. However, different geographical locations could potentially have
different results (e.g., Montreal—ongoing study in collaboration with Dr. Debra Titone).