I was being sarcastic!: The effect of foreign accent and political ideology on irony (mis)understanding

Puhacheuskaya, Veranika; Järvikivi, Juhani

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103479

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…To do so, participants first rated the level of irony of comments produced by a native or a foreign protagonist in a story context, and then assessed the appropriateness of their interlocutors' responses. We replicated previous findings on the effect of foreign accent on the degree of irony perceived by L1 users Caffarra, Michell, and Martin 2018;Puhacheuskaya and Järvikivi 2022). Moreover, the results of the experiment suggest that not only does the speaker's identity influence language processing, as previously reported (Fairchild and Papafragou 2018;Foucart and Hartsuiker 2021;Foucart, Santamaría-García, andHartsuiker 2019, 2020;van Berkum et al 2008), but this influence has consequences on L1 users' behaviour and social interaction as well.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Recent literature has shown that the degree of perceived irony is also affected by the speaker identity and related indexical cues, such as the speaker's accent. Indeed, statements spoken in a foreign 1 accent are assessed as less ironic (Caffarra, Michell, and Martin 2018;Puhacheuskaya and Järvikivi 2022) and they trigger different neural patterns during sentence processing than those spoken in a native accent. These findings add up to previous studies that have demonstrated the impact of the perceived identity (Fairchild and Papafragou 2018;Fairchild, Mathis, and Papafragou 2020;Foucart, Santamaría-García, and Hartsuiker 2019) and the speaker's identity expressed vocally on sentence comprehension (Foucart and Hartsuiker 2021;van Berkum et al 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of foreign accent on irony and its consequences on social interaction

Bazzi

Brouwer

Foucart

2022

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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Literature has shown that foreign-accented (FA) speech modulates the degree of irony perceived by native (NA) individuals, but the subsequent consequences it may have on social interaction are unknown. To address this question, we presented Spanish first language (L1) users with written contexts with ironic/literal praises allocated to either a NA or a FA speaker. Written modality was used to avoid disfluency and to examine the impact of expectations of non-L1 comprehension on irony processing. For each of the 104 contexts, participants had to (1) assess the degree of irony of the speaker's praise inserted in the context, (2) assess the speaker's level of friendliness and (3) indicate the level of correctness of the response given to the ironic/ literal comment. Results indicate that the speaker's identity modulates the degree of perceived irony as well as the perceived appropriateness of the responses given to ironic comments, even when the accent is not experienced. The theory proposed to account for the findings is that the expectation one has of a foreign individual's speech affects language processing that leads to misinterpretations, which may, consequently, deteriorate social interaction between L1 and LX users.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of foreign accent on irony and its consequences on social interaction

Bazzi

Brouwer

Foucart

2022

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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“…Recent empirical evidence suggests that the (foreign) accentedness of the speech may hamper the interpretation of the message. Literature has demonstrated that foreign-accented speech impacts the way native listeners process language at lexicosemantic, syntactic, or even pragmatic level (Goslin et al, 2012;Hanulíková et al, 2012;Romero-Rivas et al, 2015;Grey and van Hell, 2017;Caffarra et al, 2018;Foucart and Hartsuiker, 2021;Gosselin et al, 2021;Bazzi et al, 2022a;Puhacheuskaya and Järvikivi, 2022). The foreign accent also affects the way speakers are perceived by native speakers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

War feels less horrid in a foreign accent: exploring the impact of the foreign accent on emotionality

Bazzi,

Brouwer,

Khan

et al. 2024

Front. Lang. Sci.

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IntroductionThe processing of a foreign accent is known to increase cognitive load for the native listener, establish psychological distance with the foreign-accented speaker, and even influence decision-making. Similarly, research in the field of emotional processing indicates that a foreign accent may impact the native listener's emotionality. Taking these aspects into consideration, the current study aimed to confirm the hypothesis that a foreign accent, compared to a native accent, significantly affects the processing of affective-laden words.MethodsIn order to test this hypothesis, native Spanish speakers participated in an online experiment in which they rated on a Likert scale the valence and arousal of positive, neutral and negative words presented in native and foreign accents.ResultsResults confirm a foreign accent effect on emotional processing whereby positively valenced words are perceived as less positive and negatively valenced words as less negative when processed in a foreign accent compared to a native accent. Moreover, the arousal provoked by emotion words is lesser when words are processed in a foreign than a native accent.DiscussionWe propose possible, not mutually exclusive, explanations for the effect based on linguistic fluency, language attitudes and the linguistic context of language acquisition. Although further research is needed to confirm them, these explanations may be relevant for models of language comprehension and language learning. The observation of a reduction in emotionality resulting from a foreign accent is important for society as important decisions are made by representatives with diverse language and accent backgrounds. Our findings demonstrate that the choice of the language, which entails speaking in a native or a foreign accent, can be crucial when discussing topics such as the consequences of wars, pandemics, or natural disasters on human beings.

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“…There is mounting evidence that listener’s character traits, from disgust sensitivity to political ideology, affect various aspects of healthy language processing [e.g., 40 – 45 ]. Importantly for our purpose, [ 46 ] found that individual disgust sensitivity mediates lexical decision times to high-disgust words.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship

Puhacheuskaya

Lyall²,

Järvikivi³

2022

PLoS ONE

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Disgust is an aversive reaction protecting an organism from disease. People differ in how prone they are to experiencing it, and this fluctuates depending on how safe the environment is. Previous research has shown that the recognition and processing of disgusting words depends not on the word’s disgust per se but rather on individual sensitivity to disgust. However, the influence of dynamically changing disgust on language comprehension has not yet been researched. In a series of studies, we investigated whether the media’s portrayal of COVID-19 will affect subsequent language processing via changes in disgust. The participants were exposed to news headlines either depicting COVID-19 as a threat or downplaying it, and then rated single words for disgust and valence (Experiment 1; N = 83) or made a lexical decision (Experiment 2; N = 86). The headline type affected only word ratings and not lexical decisions, but political ideology and disgust proneness affected both. More liberal participants assigned higher disgust ratings after the headlines discounted the threat of COVID-19, whereas more conservative participants did so after the headlines emphasized it. We explain the results through the politicization and polarization of the pandemic. Further, political ideology was more predictive of reaction times in Experiment 2 than disgust proneness. High conservatism correlated with longer reaction times for disgusting and negative words, and the opposite was true for low conservatism. The results suggest that disgust proneness and political ideology dynamically interact with perceived environmental safety and have a measurable effect on language processing. Importantly, they also suggest that the media’s stance on the pandemic and the political framing of the issue may affect the public response by increasing or decreasing our disgust.

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I was being sarcastic!: The effect of foreign accent and political ideology on irony (mis)understanding

Cited by 6 publications

References 60 publications

The impact of foreign accent on irony and its consequences on social interaction

The impact of foreign accent on irony and its consequences on social interaction

War feels less horrid in a foreign accent: exploring the impact of the foreign accent on emotionality

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship

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