Responses to Dutch-accented English
Publication year
2012Number of pages
20 p.
Source
World Englishes, 31, 2, (2012), pp. 248-267ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
Display more detailsDisplay less details
Organization
Communicatie- en informatiewetenschappen
Engelse Taal en Cultuur
Methoden
Former Organization
Bedrijfscommunicatie
Journal title
World Englishes
Volume
vol. 31
Issue
iss. 2
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 248
Page end
p. 267
Subject
Language in Mind; Language in Society; Languages in Transition Stages; Non-nativeness in Communication; Responsible OrganizationAbstract
This paper reports on a study into the reactions of ‘native’ speakers of British English to Dutch-English pronunciations in the onset of a telephone sales talk. In an experiment 144 highly educated British professionals who were either familiar or not familiar with Dutch-accented English responded to a slight Dutch English accent, a moderate Dutch English accent or a ‘Standard British English accent’ (BrE). These accents were rated on the personality traits status and affect, on their intelligibility (orthographic transcription), comprehensibility (identification of key words), and interpretability (paraphrasing the purpose of the message). Although British English was more intelligible and comprehensible than both Dutch English accents, all three accents were equally interpretable. The results indicated that a British English pronunciation evoked more status than both Dutch English accents, and both British English and the slight Dutch English accent commanded more affect than the moderate Dutch English accent.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238441]
- Electronic publications [122541]
- Faculty of Arts [29387]
- Nijmegen School of Management [18274]
- Open Access publications [97533]
Upload full text
Use your RU credentials (u/z-number and password) to log in with SURFconext to upload a file for processing by the repository team.