COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Are accents from different Ohio regions obvious to listeners? That is one question an Ohio State University study sought to answer.
The study, which took place at COSI's Language Sciences Research Lab, examined how people perceive accents across different parts of the state, according to a news release. The results suggest that while many Ohioans believe certain areas have stronger accents than others, their ability to recognize those accents in actual speech does not quite match up.
“People probably don’t learn who has an accent from hearing someone talk and thinking, ‘huh, they sound funny’ — even though sometimes it feels like that’s how we do it,” said Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, author of the study and associate professor of linguistics at Ohio State.
Bird flu in Ohio: What to do if you observe a sick bird and how to keep pets healthyJust over 1,000 participants aged 9 and up, visiting the museum, were part of the study. Most of them were from Ohio. They listened to recordings of speakers from northern, central and southern parts of the state. The audio, which was limited to several individual words, was then rated by participants. Each voice was placed on a scale from “not at all accented” to “very accented.”
“Americans often listen to vowels to judge how much of an accent someone has,” Campbell-Kibler said.
Then, not based on the recordings, participants were asked how accented they thought the speech was in various parts of Ohio. People in the study believed southern Ohioans had the strongest accents, scoring them between 60 and 70 on a 100-point scale. Central Ohioans, on the other hand, were seen as having little to no accent, averaging around 20 to 25. Northern Ohio fell somewhere in-between, at about 50.
As it turned out, researchers found that the accent ratings from the recordings did not always match the participants' assumptions about accents in Ohio.
Burglary suspect shot, killed by deputy in Ross County“Just because people gave a high rating to the idea that people in southern Ohio have an accent, that doesn’t mean they are good at hearing how actual southern Ohioans pronounce vowels differently,” said Campbell-Kibler.
The results, which were published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, also noted a difference in perceptions depending on participants' ages. Younger participants were less likely to have strong opinions about accents in different areas of Ohio.
Campbell-Kibler stated that ideas about accents might be learned through culture.
“We may hear friends say they have an aunt in Akron who talks funny or hear people on the TV or the movies from Alabama or Britain talk differently than we do,” Campbell-Kibler said. “There’s a lot more we need to learn about how accents are represented cognitively in our brains.”
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