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posted by CoolHand on Friday May 29 2015, @06:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the could-you-please-speak-in-english dept.

Racial stereotypes and expectations can impact the way we communicate and understand others, according to UBC research. The new study, published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, highlights how non-verbal "social cues" - such as photographs of Chinese Canadians - can affect how we comprehend speech.

"This research brings to light our internal biases, and the role of experience and stereotypes, in how we listen to and hear each other," says Molly Babel, the paper's lead author and an assistant professor with UBC's Department of Linguistics.

One of the study's tasks involved participants from the UBC community transcribing pre-recorded sentences amid background static. The sentences were recorded by 12 native speakers of Canadian English. Half of the speakers self-identified as White, and the other half self-identified as Chinese. All speakers were born and raised in Richmond, B.C., which is south of Vancouver.

The pre-recorded sentences were accompanied by either black and white photos of the speakers, or by an image of three crosses. Overall, listeners found the Chinese Canadians more difficult to understand than the White Canadians - but only when they were made aware that the speaker was Chinese Canadian due to the photo prompt.

Participants were also asked to rate the strength of the accents of the speakers. They were asked to listen to two sentences from each speaker - one accompanied by the speaker's photo, the other by an image of crosses. "Once participants were aware that they were listening to a White Canadian, suddenly the candidate was perceived as having less of a foreign accent and sounding more like a native speaker of Canadian English," says Babel.

"It tells us as listeners that we need to be sensitive about the stereotypes that we carry," notes Jamie Russell, the study's co-author who was an undergraduate honours student in UBC's Department of Linguistics during the project.

http://phys.org/news/2015-05-racial-stereotypes-impact.html

[Abstract]: http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/jasa/137/5/10.1121/1.4919317

[Source]: http://news.ubc.ca/2015/05/26/how-racial-stereotypes-impact-the-way-we-communicate/


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Friday May 29 2015, @02:11PM

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Friday May 29 2015, @02:11PM (#189666) Homepage

    Well maybe the person thought you were English and was just being a dick by speaking to you in Gaelic.
     
    I have had a very different experience with language while I lived in Paris for 3 months. By the end of my stay I had picked up enough where I could understand a fair amount but when I talked to people I probably came off as a retarded child as I would have to pause think and eventually respond in very poor French. I did find that trying to communicate with the French in French would go along way even if it was shitty French. Very often early on they would respond back in English to my inquiries but it did require speaking their language in their country. I did however have a rather interesting exchange with a Scott while there.
     
    I was taking some nighttime long exposure photos of Notre Dame de Paris and a large redheaded man with a ZZ Top beard comes up to me. He asked me something in French that I figured meant he was asking if he could use my tripod but he had a very thick Scottish accent. I responded back in English that I really didn't speak French. His response "Bloody good! Finally someone who speaks the fuckin language! I was wantin to know if I could borrow your tripod there as I left mine in Edinburgh." We got to talking about photography and after we were both done he asked
    "Do you like Scotch?"
    Me:"I don't know I've never had Scotch."
    Him: "Do you like Cognac?"
    Me: "Yes"
    Him: "You'll love scotch. I know a place in the Latin Quarter"
    So we wander down to this bar in the Latin quarter, he orders a bottle of single malt scotch and 2 glasses. We drank and shot the breeze until we got kicked out the next morning when the subway started running again.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday May 30 2015, @08:07AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday May 30 2015, @08:07AM (#190023) Homepage
    Not one dick seen in Ireland. They were without exception friendly, open, and helpful. Even in the big impersonal cities like Dublin. However, the west coast is something else - absolutely the warmest folk I've ever encountered.

    I won't repeat any stories about my times in France, as they would be found offensive by any french readers.
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    • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday June 01 2015, @12:14PM

      by Kromagv0 (1825) on Monday June 01 2015, @12:14PM (#190657) Homepage

      I enjoyed the Irish when I was there and like you did find them to be wonderful people, how can you go wrong with beer drinking sausage eating people. The small bus tour (about a dozen people) I took out into Wicklow was a blast and once the Irish who were on the tour found out I was from Minnesota they immediately asked if I would "Talk like Fargo". So much to my wife's dismay I did and had the whole lot of them busting a gut. She didn't like being embarrassed but I told her that they all thought it was funny and that it doesn't matter because after the day tour was done we would probably never see any of them again. For the most part I found the French to be agreeable but there were a few assholes I ran across but then I wasn't the ugly American tourist, I was living and working there for 3 months, and fit in with their cultural norms, and like I said I really did try to communicate in French.

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