Mock viva for the doctoral thesis of Sergio Rojo. The opponent is Prof. Victoria Johansson from Kristianstad University (https://www.hkr.se/personal/victoria.johansson). If you wish to obtain a copy of the draft discussed in the mock viva, please contact Sergio Rojo (sergio.rojo@englund.lu.se)
Preliminary title and abstract:
The development of accent stereotypes. A tale of two cities
This thesis investigates what factors drive the development of accent stereotypes in childhood. Specifically, it centers on four research questions.
1. Do children develop stereotypes towards so-called “foreign” accents at an earlier age than to so-called
“native” accents?
2. Is there a correlation between the development of accent stereotypes and the ability to categorize
accents?
3. Is there a correlation between the development of accent stereotypes and the ability to understand
accents?
4. Does linguistic diversity in a child’s environment while growing up shape how or when they develop
accent stereotypes?
A quantitative investigation was carried out to answer these questions. A data set from 249 children between the ages of 7 and 11 years was collected. Of these, 136 were born and raised in Plymouth (Southwest England, 74 girls). The other 113 were born and raised in London (51 girls). The experimental set-up included a survey for the children’s caregivers and a battery of tests for children that included an intelligibility task (speech-in-noise), a verbal-guise task (e.g. how smart they think a speaker of a given accent is), an accent classification task, where they group multiple speakers of each accent, and the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (a receptive vocabulary task).