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Perceptual and Phonetic Experiments on American English Dialect Identification

University of Wisconsin-Madison

William Idsardi

University of Delaware

John Baugh

Stanford University

The ability to discern the use of a nonstandard dialect is often enough information to also determine the speaker’s ethnicity, and speakers may consequently suffer discrimination based on their speech. This article, detailing four experiments, shows that housing discrimination based solely on telephone conversations occurs, dialect identification is possible using the word hello, and phonetic correlates of dialect can be discovered. In one experiment, a series of telephone surveys was conducted; housing was requested from the same landlord during a short time period using standard and nonstandard dialects. The results demonstrate that landlords discriminate against prospective tenants on the basis of the sound of their voice during telephone conversations. Another experiment was conducted with untrained participants to confirm this ability; listeners identified the dialects significantly better than chance. Phonetic analysis reveals that phonetic variables potentially distinguish the dialects.

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