Chapter 13
Phonetic Detail in the Perception of
Ethnic Varieties of US English
Thomas C. Purnell, University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Introduction
While this chapter is concerned with the way acoustic cues of ethnically af¿ l-
iated speech are selected and perceived, it also highlights the complex way
social group and language interact phonetically. Results from the analysis of
two data sets support the claim that the mapping of acoustic characteristics
onto perceptual cues is neither linear nor entirely transparent. The chapter
proceeds as follows. In Section 2, perceptual dialectology frames the issue
of perceiving ethnically af¿ liated dialects. The link between an utterance
and the reaction to that utterance as emphasized in perceptual dialectology is
argued to be somewhat opaque given non-linear or non-transparent layering
of phonetic information. Understanding the phonetic non-linearity requires
analytical techniques which are also non-linear and uncover latent linguistic
factors. The next two sections provide just such analyses of acoustic charac-
teristics and perceptual cues. Section 3 reports a reanalysis of a southeastern
Wisconsin dialect strongly inÀ uenced by ethnically af¿ liated immigrant lan-
guages, while Section 4 offers a reanalysis of characteristics and cues to Afri-
can American English, Chicano English and Standard American English. The
analysis in both Section 3 and Section 4 allow exploratory post-hoc analysis
of acoustic characteristics in order to see whether a non-linear acoustic model
has the same ability to distinguish dialects as a model driven by perception
results. Finally, Section 5 concludes the chapter with a general discussion
about the mapping of acoustic characteristics onto perceptual cues.
- Ethnically af¿ liated dialects and perceptual dialectology
Perception of ethnically af¿ liated varieties of American English is inÀ uenced
by the À uctuating and static properties of the ethnicity-speech connection.