Lectal acquisition and linguistic stereotype formation 255enlisted for these accents. In Table 26 we specify the number of types
quoted by the subjects.
4.5. Social awareness and familiarity as a subjective distance
If lectal categories are experientially grounded, based on real encounters
with linguistic variants and variables in purposeful usage in meaningful
contexts, the idea that social and linguistic awareness should increase with
exposure to social and linguistic variety is a natural corollary.
To what extent would travelling to foreign countries for instance affect
the success rate? We hypothesize that widely travelled children receive
more exposure to variation and that this increase in exposure results in a
higher degree of lectal awareness.
Table 27. Familiarity as a subjective distance: the effects of travelling on foreign
accent identification
Correlation correct answers in
experiment 2/countries visited Total
Total hits in test 2 3 4 5 7
0 countries visited 1 2 6 2 2 13
% countries visited/hit 7.7% 15.4% 46.2% 15.4% 15.4% 100%
1-2 countries visited 1 3 9 7 0 20
% countries visited/hit 5.0% 15.0% 45.0% 35.0% 0.0% 100%
3 + countries visited 1 2 9 3 2 17
% countries visited/hit 5.9% 11.8% 52.9% 17.6% 11.8% 100%
Total countries visited 3 7 24 12 4 50
Total % countries
visited/hit 6.0% 14.0% 48.0% 24.0% 8.0% 100%Table 27 correlates the number of countries visited by the 12-13 year-olds
with the results they obtained in the second experiment (foreign accents).
Contrary to our expectations, however, the results do not improve as the
result of exposure to cultures and languages in the form of travelling to
foreign countries. The children who had visited more than 3 countries hard-
ly improved their results with respect to the ones who had never been
abroad. By way of example, in the case of the children who had 4 correct