Voice disguise and foreign accent: Prosodic aspects of English produced by Brazilian Portuguese speakers

• Leônidas Silva Jr. ^[1] ; Plínio A. Barbosa ^[2]
  1. [1] Universidade Estadual da Paraíba

     Universidade Estadual da Paraíba

     Brasil

     
  2. [2] Universidade de Campinas
• Localización: Estudios de fonética experimental, ISSN 1575-5533, ISSN-e 2385-3573, Nº. 32, 2023, págs. 195-226
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1344/efe-2023-32-195-226
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Disfressa de veu i accent estranger: Aspectes prosòdics de l’anglès produït per parlants de portu-guès brasiler
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • català

    Aquest estudi té l’objectiu d’explorar en quina mesura un parlant d’anglès com a llengua estrangera pot emmascarar el seu accent perquè soni com un parlant nadiu i quines implicacions podria tenir. Pel que fa a la metodologia, es van realitzar tres experiments: (a) tant el grup nadiu com l’estranger van produir veus autèntiques, (b) el grup de parlants nadius va produir una veu autèntica i el grup estranger va produir una veu disfressada, i (c) un grup d’oients nadius d’anglès va qualificar el grau d’accent estranger dels experiments ai b. Els resultats van mostrar una correlació entre les qualificacions i les veus autèntiques. No obstant això, els resultats obtinguts per a la veu disfressada no són concloents. Es pot concloure que com més s’apropa a l’accent de l’anglès-L1 el parlant brasiler quan disfressa la veu, més difícil li resulta a l’oient reconèixer el seu accent d’anglès-L2.

  • English

    This study aims to explore how much a speaker of English as a foreign language can mask one’s accent by performing voice disguise toward a native-like accent, and what implications it might bring forward. For the Methods, we conducted three experiments, (a) both the native and the foreign groups produced authentic voices, (b) the native group performed authentic voice and the foreign group performed disguised voice, and (c) a group of native listeners of English rated the degree of foreign accent from experiments a and b. The results showed evidence of correlation between the ratings and authentic voices. Nevertheless, they remained somewhat inconclusive for the disguised voice. It may be concluded that the more the Brazilian speaker approaches the L1-English target accent when voice disguising, the harder it is for the listener to recognize his/her L2-English accent.

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