The Social Meaning of Contextualized Sibilant Alternations in Berlin German

Abstract

In Berlin, the pronunciation of /ç/ as [ɕ] is associated with the multi-ethnic youth variety ( Kiezdeutsch ). This alternation is also known to be produced by French learners of German. While listeners form socio-cultural interpretations upon hearing language input, the associations differ depending on the listeners’ biases and stereotypes toward speakers or groups. Here, the contrast of interest concerns two speaker groups using the [ç]–[ɕ] alternation: multi-ethnic adolescents from Berlin neighborhoods carrying low social prestige in mainstream German society and French learners of German supposedly having higher cultural prestige. To understand the strength of associations between phonetic alternations and social attributes, we ran an Implicit Association Task with 131 participants (three groups varying in age and ethnic background (mono- vs. multi-ethnic German) using auditory and written stimuli. In experiment 1, participants categorized written words as having a positive ( good ) or negative ( bad ) valence and auditory stimuli containing pronunciation variations of /ç/ as canonical [ç] (labeled Hochdeutsch [a term used in Germany for Standard German]) or non-canonical [ɕ] (labeled Kiezdeutsch ). In experiment 2, identical auditory stimuli were used but the label Kiezdeutsch was changed to French Accent . Results show faster reaction times when negative categories and non-canonical pronunciations or positive categories and canonical pronunciations were mapped to the same response key, indicating a tight association between value judgments and concept categories. Older German listeners (OMO) match a supposed Kiezdeutsch accent more readily with negatively connotated words compared to a supposed French accent, while younger German listeners (YMO) seem to be indifferent toward this variation. Young multi-ethnic listeners (YMU), however, seem to associate negative concepts more strongly with a supposed French accent compared to Kiezdeutsch . These results demonstrate how social and cultural contextualization influences language interpretation and evaluation. We interpret our findings as a loss of cultural prestige of French speakers for the YMO group compared to the OMO group: younger urban listeners do not react differently to these contextual primes. YMU listeners, however, show a positive bias toward their in-group. Our results point to implicit listener attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes and shared world knowledge as significant factors in culturally- and socially situated language processing.

Foreign language acquisition of perceptually similar segments: evidence from Lower Sorbian

“…The feature in Lower Sorbian that was found to most strongly distinguish /ʂ, ɕ/ from each other was a much higher transitional F2 into the following vowel for /ɕ/ compared to /ʂ/ ( Howson, 2015 ). The lower COG values observed in Lower Sorbian, tend to match cross-linguistic COG associated with /ʃ/ ( Żygis, 2010 ) and COG and skewness measures associated with German /ʃ/ ( Weirich & Simpson, 2015 ). Thus, I expect that low level (i.e., A-level) learners will share tongue contours for /ʂ, ɕ/ and that they will both resemble /ʃ/.…”

Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods

“…The focus of research on language processing and use has di ered across sub-fields of the language sciences. In sociolinguistics, considerable attention has been given historically to language use as a function of societal groups, among them groups based on gender (Tannen, ; Laws et from psycholinguistic research, accounts of situated language processing have begun to include language user characteristics to model the observed inter-individual variability (Jannedy and Weirich, 2014;Münster and Knoeferle, 2018;Weirich et al, 2020). Related to the focus on inter-individual variation, much about mental representations remains to be uncovered regarding situation-dependent linguistic variability within one and the same group/language user and at the intersection with interindividual variation in language use.…”

“…But over the past two decades, investigations have also begun to broaden out to other language user groups among them children and adolescents (Schwab et al, 2021 ), mid-age adults (Huettig and Janse, 2015 ), older adults (Federmeier and Kutas, 2005 ; Maquate and Knoeferle, 2021 ; Adli, 2022 ), illiterates (Mishra et al, 2012 ; Huettig et al, 2018 ), and second language learners (Osterhout et al, 2008 ; McLaughlin et al, 2010 ; Ito et al, 2018 ). Drawing on these and other insights from psycholinguistic research, accounts of situated language processing have begun to include language user characteristics to model the observed inter-individual variability (Jannedy and Weirich, 2014 ; Münster and Knoeferle, 2018 ; Weirich et al, 2020 ). Related to the focus on inter-individual variation, much about mental representations remains to be uncovered regarding situation-dependent linguistic variability within one and the same group/language user and at the intersection with inter-individual variation in language use.…”

Culinary inheritance: a new paradigm of innovating knowledge teaching

“…These relationships are complex because they constantly change to meet the needs of the students at different learning points. As learners gain experience in specific activities, mental schemas are formed and stored in their long-term memory (Weirich et al. , 2020).…”

“…These relationships are complex because they constantly change to meet the needs of the students at different learning points. As learners gain experience in specific activities, mental schemas are formed and stored in their long-term memory (Weirich et al, 2020). Situated cognition asserts that conceptual learning is "situated" in the activities through which students acquire knowledge of the concepts being taught (Hickey et al, 2020;Shyr et al, 2018).…”