Brandon C. Loudermilk, Ph.D. - US grants

Models of language processing have primarily focused on word and sentence-level processing. When issues of social context have been considered, they have traditionally been argued to occur after sentence meaning has been computed. However, recent research suggests that larger contextual factors, such as world-knowledge and speaker-knowledge, are integrated during sentence interpretation by the same cognitive processes that support lexical-semantic integration. What remains relatively unknown and unexplored is how sociolinguistic variation is perceived during on-line speech processing. This study uses multiple methodologies to investigate language attitude and its relationship to language processing. The present study measures changes in brain activity using electrophysiological scalp recordings (i.e. event-related potentials) to assess the real-time integration of sentences that differ along well-defined sociolinguistic variables. In addition, the researchers make use of a novel behavioral technique -- the implicit attitude test -- to characterize the implicit attitudes and social meanings associated with specific sociolinguistic variables. Finally, direct field recording of participants is used to measure the degree of sociolinguistic variation evident in our participants' speech. Multiple linear regression models will be fitted to the data to elucidate the relationship between individual patterns of production and language attitude with electrophysiological measures of language perception. In this work they seek to understand the cognitive processes that support the perception of sociolinguistic variation during on-line language processing and the degree to which implicit sociolinguistic knowledge and native patterns of variation contribute to the processing of this variation. In our increasingly multicultural and multilingual world, an understanding of how we perceive language, dialects, and linguistic variation and the relationship these features have to language attitude, plays an increasingly important role in shaping social behavior and policy.

In human communication, in addition to the words we utter, how we choose to say something often carries social significance and meaning. For example, a speaker may report to his boss: "Last weekend I went hunting and fishing" while the same speaker talking amongst peers might say: "Las' weeken' I went huntin' an' fishin'." In informal conversational registers, speakers will more often delete word final t/d and drop their g's from progressive verbs than in more formal speech. Importantly, the manner in which an utterance is spoken and the frequency of sociolinguistic variables can influence how the speaker is perceived (e.g., educated vs. uneducated; aloof vs. friendly). Linguists have identified the systematic social, stylistic, and linguistic constraints that modulate the production of sociolinguistic variation. These include linguistic factors, such as lexical class and phonological environment, as well as external factors, such as gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Although there is a relative wealth of data on variation in language production, studies on variation perception have been much more limited. As speech perception is a fundamental aspect of human communication, the study of how individuals perceive, process, and represent linguistic variation is of inherent scientific interest. The study of variation perception can provide valuable evidence of how language intersects with attitude in shaping social stereotypes, prejudice, and behavior. The way we perceive variation and the social attitudes it engenders affects every one of us, from the recent child immigrant to the aspiring politician. As such, the study of variation perception and language attitude has important implications for education, law, and public policy.