<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> Some (though not all) previous studies have documented the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB), i.e. the greater intelligibility of non-native (relative to native) speech to non-native listeners as compared to native listeners. Moreover, some studies (again not all) found that native listeners consider foreign-accented statements as less truthful than native-sounding ones. We join these two lines of research, asking whether foreign-accented statements sound more credible to non-native than to native listeners and whether difficult-to-process (less comprehensible) utterances are less credible. In two experiments we measure the intelligibility, comprehensibility and credibility of native and foreign-accented statements for native listeners and non-native listeners matched or mismatched in L1 with non-native talkers. We find an ISIB in both matched and mismatched non-native listeners, and an analogous matched comprehensibility benefit. However, we obtain no evidence of an interlanguage speech credibility benefit. Instead, both matched and mismatched non-native listeners tend to trust native statements more (i.e. statements produced by their target-language models). For native listeners, we do not confirm the tendency to mistrust non-native statements, but we do find a moderate correlation between the comprehensibility and credibility of foreign-accented utterances, giving limited support to the hypothesis that decreased perceptual fluency leads to decreased credibility.</p></abstract>

Some (though not all) previous studies have documented the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB), i.e. the greater intelligibility of non-native (relative to native) speech to non-native listeners as compared to native listeners. Moreover, some studies (again not all) found that native listeners consider foreign-accented statements as less truthful than native-sounding ones. We join these two lines of research, asking whether foreign-accented statements sound more credible to non-native than to native listeners and whether difficult-to-process (less comprehensible) utterances are less credible. In two experiments we measure the intelligibility, comprehensibility and credibility of native and foreign-accented statements for native listeners and non-native listeners matched or mismatched in L1 with non-native talkers. We find an ISIB in both matched and mismatched non-native listeners, and an analogous matched comprehensibility benefit. However, we obtain no evidence of an interlanguage speech credibility benefit. Instead, both matched and mismatched non-native listeners tend to trust native statements more (i.e. statements produced by their target-language models). For native listeners, we do not confirm the tendency to mistrust non-native statements, but we do find a moderate correlation between the comprehensibility and credibility of foreign-accented utterances, giving limited support to the hypothesis that decreased perceptual fluency leads to decreased credibility.

Is there an interlanguage speech credibility benefit?

PhD. Department of English and American Studies Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Křížkovského 10 77180, Olomouc Czech Republic

Department of English and American Studies Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Křížkovského 10 77180, Olomouc Czech Republic

Topics in Linguistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"Is there an interlanguage speech credibility benefit?"}

Some (though not all) previous studies have documented the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB), i.e. the greater intelligibility of non-native...

Is there an interlanguage speech credibility benefit?

Published Online: Jun 15, 2016

Page range: 30 - 44

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/topling-2016-0003

Keywords
second-language acquisition, foreign accent, speech perception, intelligibility, comprehensibility, credibility, perceptual fluency

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Is there an interlanguage speech credibility benefit?

Published Online: Jun 15, 2016

Page range: 30 - 44

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/topling-2016-0003

Keywordssecond-language acquisition, foreign accent, speech perception, intelligibility, comprehensibility, credibility, perceptual fluency

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
second-language acquisition, foreign accent, speech perception, intelligibility, comprehensibility, credibility, perceptual fluency