The Most Important Thing in Language Comprehension: Revisited

After several weeks of exploring linguistics (admittedly on a pretty basic level), I don't think I need to change what I had said earlier. Although we still haven't gone through lexical differences as much and so maybe I might change my opinion after tomorrow's class, I still believe that the lexicon, followed perhaps by syntax are the important parts in understanding speech. Sounds are not as relevant.

I believe this to be true, and not just from English. When I speak to someone who is not a native English speaker (or even sometimes to those who are) who pronounce things differently, there is an adjustment period but I can soon work out what they are saying without much difficulty. There are sometimes even cases where I have no real idea how I figured out what they were trying to say, but I somehow knew. The same is true in Hindi; I'm taking a Hindi class here (and have heard non-Indians speak Hindi before), and even though some of the sounds are quite difficult to produce, even when people don't get them exactly right the words are possible to understand. This is usually due to context or perhaps the mind works through all the possibilities for that sound it's hearing and figures out which one it ought to be and processes it accordingly.

The context can help with a lexical problem, but there it's far more difficult: a new word entirely, sometimes one that does not seem to make sense, makes it difficult to understand speech. When a dialect is full of new/different phrases and words, it is far harder to understand simply because the outsider has no reference point. I sometimes get confused as to whether slang counts in this category; I think it must, because it is part of the lexicon and people use it in everyday speaking to refer to something (whatever it might be). This makes it all the harder because slang definitely does vary from place to place and can be difficult to pick up without being explicitly explained.

Lexical Differences

I think lexical differences are really interesting because they say a lot about the cultural divides between different groups, whether it's geographic (as we're mostly interested in) or between groups of different ages or social classes.

Over time the lexicon changes, and I find it interesting that one word from my parents' generation's slang that has remained in ours (though it has been added to) is the word "cool." My grandparents (who speak fluent English though they grew up in India) would not automatically understand the word cool to mean something generally positive. My parents, on the other hand, do understand this from their own context growing up, and it is still used today.

Speaking geographically, I like Sadie's example of bubbler because moving to Wisconsin although I didn't hear THAT many people use bubbler and not understand water fountain, there were definitely a few and it caused some serious problems. There is also a significant lexical difference between Indian and American English, and some of this might have to do with the British colonial influence that's much more immediate in India. One example that comes to mind is the verb "stay" which in Indian English has a connotation more of "live" (i.e. "Where do you stay?" = "Where do you live?"). The biggest difference I have noticed is that it is very American to say "I'm okay" for "no thanks" or " I'm fine the way I am." For example, my aunt asked me if I wanted a glass of water, and I said "No, I'm okay," but instead of accepting that she asked again, "Oh, no, I asked if you wanted a glass of water." I was implying "No, I'm okay without the water," but she didn't understand this. That has happened to me on more than one occasion, and I came to realize that it was a lexical difference.

Thoughts on the Perception Experiment

At first I thought this was way too scientific and technical for me to be able to understand, but I quickly got the hang of it as I read through. I was surprised by the extent of statistical manipulation that the team did on the data, and I especially liked the tree they created for the perceptional similarity for the different groups. I thought it interesting that the Mobile and Non-mobile Midlanders did not have a drastic difference in how they perceived other dialects, and I thought that the experimenters might have tried to explain that more. Clearly, moving around had a large effect on Northerners as the Non-mobile ones perceived themselves closer to the Midland than to the Northeast, the opposite for all three other groups. It seems like that is always the case: without exposure to other dialects, you tend to think that your own is the standard, or "without an accent." Since it seems that the Midland is the widely accepted "standard" dialect, perhaps that is why the Non-mobile Northerners were associating themselves with it.

It also seemed significant that the trials were held at Indian University in Bloomington, IN, an area that is quite certainly in the Midland area. The experimenters mentioned that they picked Northerners who had not been in the area for more than two years in order to avoid the effects of localization in the dialect, but to me that still seems to be a very long time. Within two years I think an accent would have adapted at least somewhat to the local area, and, more importantly, hearing that dialect around you all the time you are more likely to associate others with it. Therefore, perhaps the Non-mobile Northerners, having only been exposed to the North and the Midland, drew a similarity between the two for that reason only.

I liked the idea of examining mobility because I believe that does have a large effect on the way you perceive dialects. My own project will be quite similar to this, so I will use some of the techniques (especially in terms of randomizing the stimuli) when I conduct my own trials. I think in the future experiments based on exposure to the media would be good lenses with which to test dialect perceptions. After all, people who have not moved around much but who do watch a lot of TV where they are exposed to hearing different dialects in characters might perform better on these tests.