Bangor Linguistics Circle: The Social Perceptions of Traditional and New Speaker Accents in Welsh
Dr Ianto Gruffydd
In this Linguistics Circle event, Dr Ianto Gruffydd (Bangor University) will be presenting his PhD research on the social perceptions of traditional and new speaker accents in Welsh. Come along in person or join us online!
Abstract:
Perception studies in sociolinguistics have shown that people socially evaluate others to a significant degree based on the accent they speak (e.g. Loureiro-Rodriguez et al. 2013), and that specific linguistic variants can be inherently linked to social evaluations (e.g. Schleef & Flynn 2015). Negative social evaluations of linguistic variants have been shown to lead to discrimination towards certain groups (e.g. Lippi-Green 2012).
In the case of Welsh, the development of Welsh-medium schooling and opportunities for language learning in English-medium and adult education has led to an increase of new speakers who did not acquire Welsh at home (cf. Traditional Speakers). Despite preliminary work on the social evaluation of new speaker varieties (Robert 2009) and social variation (Mayr et al. 2017; Morris 2017, 2021; Mennen et al. 2020), very little is known about social evaluations of accent in Welsh.
The current study attempts to shed light on the social perception of Welsh accents. We address the following questions:
RQ1: How accurately can L1 Welsh speakers identify the linguistic backgrounds of other speakers based on accent?
RQ2: What social evaluations are associated with different accents and speaker backgrounds?
RQ3: What segmental and prosodic features characterise the different accents of Welsh speakers according to listeners?