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.
Although English is the most common language in the United States, the way people speak is highly variable. It is not uncommon to hear impressions about how other people speak. For example "people in the north talk fast" or "in the south people speak slow." Sociolinguists have studied how people react to variation in speech and have shown that people commonly make judgments, not only about a speaker's hometown or place of birth, but also more personal traits such as whether the speaker is rich or poor, well-schooled or uneducated. Language scientists have found that during language comprehension we not only understand the words that are being said (e.g. "car" is a form of transportation), but also the extra-linguistic social information that is conveyed by speaking in a particular way (e.g. he says "ca- not car", perhaps he is a blue-collar worker from New York City). Many studies have documented that people make judgments and form attitudes about others based on how they speak, but we don’t know how or when we integrate this attitudinal and sociolinguistic information with the knowledge of what a word means. A related issue is whether we store these two types of knowledge (i.e. lexical meaning and sociolinguistic knowledge) separately or together. The present research sought to explore these questions. Our research is unique because we used electrophysiological recordings of brain-waves while people listened to sentences like: Yesterday it started raining versus Yesterday is started rainin’. This technique gives precise information about how word knowledge is integrated in real time, and also provides some assessment of the different neural regions that may contribute to the processing of language. By comparing brain responses of sentences with canonical endings (e.g. raining) to vernacular endings (e.g. rainin’) (the "dropping" of a "g" is a sociolinguistic variant), and sentences with unexpected word choices "Yesterday it started raining" versus "Yesterday is started storming," we were able to see whether the extra-linguistic properties of speech modulated the brain waves in the same way as unexpected words. Our subjects had a more difficult time integrating the speech sample that differed from the dialect they were used to hearing. Our results further suggested that sociolinguistic variation is integrated quickly in real-time as we comprehend each word, in the same time-frame as when we comprehend the meaning of a word. This is novel because some theories suggest that we integrate the social aspects of speech only after we have comprehended the word or sentence. We also observed some unexpected findings – while we are equally quick to integrate these different types of language information at about the same time, we also observed slightly different distributions of the brain waves in response to the differences in sociolinguistic variables compared to the lexical meanings. This suggests that different regions in the brain may be particularly sensitive to these two different types of information. Another interesting finding was that in our study, women were more sensitive to these sociolinguistic manipulations compared to men. Overall our studies provide new evidence that we quickly integrate all available meaning while we are listening to language, no matter how typical or unusual it may sound to our ear. This type of research is important because it enriches our understanding of the multiple mechanisms involved in language processing. Our work also has implications for policy makers and public practitioners who may wish to know how to best reach a particular audience, or in cases where voice recordings are being used to profile individuals, as may occur during police investigations. This study was just a first attempt to study the comprehension of sociolinguistic variation using new neuroscience techniques, yet there remains more to be learned about how we fully understand the nuances of human language.
