“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” seems to have a lot of truth as research is showing a strong though probably unconscious effect that a person’s accent has on the listener. In an American study an accent which is very different from the listener’s was perceived to be less trustworthy and less reliable than one which was similar. Possibly the difficulty for native Americans in understanding the unfamiliarly accented non-native speakers’ speech was misinterpreted as the speaker having less credibility rather than the true cause being the extra processing needed to gain understanding. Bestelmeyer’s UK study supports this, as the Scottish participants reported similar findings when listening to Scottish speakers compared to American or English speakers. MRI scans showed that words spoken with familiar accents are processed more quickly and effortlessly than other accents even when the language is native to all speakers. It is suggested that these processing difficulties may be the basis or origin of prejudice, as in one’s own accent identifying the ingroup, and other accents identifying outgroups.
Bestelmeyer et al. (2010) Society for Neuroscience. “Listeners’ Brains Respond More to Native Accent Speakers; Imaging Study Suggests Accents Are Subtle ‘Insider’ or ‘Outsider’ Signal to the Brain.” ScienceDaily, 18 November 2010.
Lev-Ari et al. (2010) Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025
What is she thinking? Mirror neurons have been hailed by some as a discovery of major importance (for exampl,e the neurologist V.S. Ramachandran). It is claimed that they may explain the ability of humans to understand what someone else is feeling and thinking. This is not mind-reading but ‘Theory of Mind’ – the understanding that other people have a separate mind to your own and therefore do not see or experience the world as you do. A certain group of neurons were discovered in macaque monkeys which were activated when the monkey was inactive itself but was watching another monkey perform an action. The big question is whether such mirror neurons, as they are called, will be able to explain empathy, autism, morality, language and more, or whether it’s all a storm in a tea cup .
This topic is covered in the A2 specification that some of you will be studying – so you might be interested in a recent item in the