A perceptual and phonetic analysis of a foreign accent in German

Attitudes to languages, as well as to accents, are often tied to attitudes towards the respective groups of people. Situations in which people are unable to add to the first impression their voice made occur frequently. Calling prospective landlords to enquire about the cheap flat advertised in the newspaper, job-interviews on the phone and recorded statements in legal settings can be serious hindrances for people with a non-native accent. In these situations we form an impression of our interlocutor on auditory information alone. Evaluative reactions based on voice are of high interest for speakers that deviate from social norms. Language learners are one of those groups. A foreign accent marks the speaker as different. This study examines the way a foreign accent is influenced by the systematic phonological differences between a speaker‘s native and second language and the effect this foreign accent has on the perception that native speakers form of the speaker. In order to do so a phonological analysis as well as a questionnaire based psycholinguistic analysis were conducted and evaluated. The study showed that typical patterns of foreign accents can be predicted from systematic differences between languages but the effects of foreign accent on different personality judgement dimensions were inconclusive, mostly due to methodological issues. In my talk I would like to present both the procedures and findings of the study which I conducted in the scope of my Bachelor thesis and to critically discuss methodological issues and their effect on the findings and their generalisability. Students planning their own psycholinguistic research for thesis or term paper purposes might find it interesting to learn what works, what goes wrong and how to avoid mistakes.