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Article published In:
25 years of Intelligibility, Comprehensibility and Accentedness
Edited by John M. Levis, Tracey M. Derwing and Murray J. Munro
[Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 6:3] 2020
► pp. 483–504

Investigating the relationship between comprehensibility and social evaluation

ORCID logo | University of Oregon
| University of Oregon

The processing fluency hypothesis proposes that listeners’ perceived difficulty processing the speech of L2 speakers (called comprehensibility/processing fluency) leads them to downgrade those speakers socially. In this paper, we investigate this relationship, focusing on context-specificity. L1-English listeners provided comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings of L1-Korean speakers speaking English, while an orthographic depiction of the speech either appeared alongside the audio or did not, a manipulation aiming to affect comprehensibility. Varying orthography between subjects, Experiment 1 found that orthography resulted in greater comprehensibility, but not more positive social evaluations. Experiment 2 manipulated orthography within subjects, varying context: orthography trials were presented first or last. Comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings were related only when orthography was first, suggesting a conditional, asymmetrical relationship where listeners more readily downgrade than upgrade the same speaker when orthography changes. Our results highlight the context-dependent nature of these constructs, limiting the generalizability of the processing fluency hypothesis.

Keywords: social evaluation, status, solidarity, comprehensibility, processing fluency
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Social evaluation and comprehensibility/processing fluency
    • 1.2The present study
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Materials and methods
      • 2.1.1Materials
      • 2.1.2Procedure
      • 2.1.3Participants
    • 2.2Results
      • 2.2.1Manipulation check
      • 2.2.2Focal analyses
    • 2.3Discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Materials and methods
      • 3.1.1Materials
      • 3.1.2Procedure
      • 3.1.3Participants
    • 3.2Results
      • 3.2.1Manipulation check
      • 3.2.2Focal analyses
    • 3.3Discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.20022.vau
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