Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics (Dec 2021)
Dutch listeners’ responses to Dutch, British and American English accents in three contexts.
Abstract
The aim of this study was to assess Dutch listeners’ responses to native-accented Englishes compared with Dutch-accented English in terms of speech understandability and speech evaluations in three professional communication contexts. In a matched-guise experiment Dutch listeners (N=392) responded to a Dutch English, a standard British and American accent in terms of speech understandability (intelligibility, comprehensibility, interpretability) and speaker evaluations (status, affect, dynamism). Dutch listeners evaluated these accents in three communication contexts: Lecture, Audio Tour, Job Pitch. Only context affected speech understandability: comprehensibility and interpretability were higher for the Lecture compared to the Audio Tour and the Job Pitch. Accent only negatively affected status evaluations for Dutch-accented English. Context only evoked more affect in the Audio Tour and the Lecture than in the Job Pitch. Our main conclusion is that Dutch-accented English negatively impacts status, but not understanding, affect and dynamism. Context impacts understanding and affect.
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