Stereotyping
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Indian English vs British RP
​(in English)

This particular exercise has been designed with English teachers in mind, especially those teaching in English as a second language (ESL) contexts. The ambition here is to show how stereotypes surrounding accent may affect judgements of a speaker’s general language performance, and indeed the person him/herself, negatively. 

Working out the script
For this purpose we created a script which was designed to simulate an oral presentation, performed by an adult male taking a course in academic English. The topic of the presentation was “social media and its effects on society”. So that we could work in imperfections, the script reflected a speaker who was rather hesitant and unsure of himself. There were, for example, long pauses interspersed between ‘uhms’ and ‘ahs’, and some grammatical mistakes motivated by false starts, as well as incorrect use of terminology here and there.

indian_vs_rp_script.pdf
File Size: 28 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File


Recording and Manipulation
The script was recorded using a bi-dialectal speaker who spoke both standard received pronunciation British English (RP), as well as Indian English. We recorded the RP-version first and then used a karaoke-like method to ensure that they were identical (including pausing, uhms and ahs etc.). We also used digital manipulation to align speech rates and intensity levels of the recordings ​
Version A: British RP
Version B: Indian English

Presenting and Conducting the Case
To hide the real purpose of the exercise, it was initially contextualised as a workshop on evaluation, where the respondents (teacher trainees and active teachers) were told they would listen to an oral presentation performed by an adult student, and evaluate the language performance of the same. They were not aware of the fact that there were two versions of the recording at this stage. Respondents were also told that their responses would form the basis of a follow-up seminar discussion, where evaluations of the “student” would be in focus.  

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Want to try?
If you want to try out the case with your own class use QR-code is link below for a ready package.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SXDYHKC 

​
Note! Contact mats.deutschmann@oru.se  if you want to do this with a group so that we can set up a specific group for you and give you access to the results.

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Link to post-survey. Please let participants answer this after the seminar discussion!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R7N92JX
​


Example of Debriefing material
Indian RP Debreif
File Size: 164 kb
File Type: pptx
Download File


Some Results from Previous Trials
​We have conducted this case on several occasions with student and teacher groups in Sweden and the Seychelles. As illustrated in Figure 5 above, the Seychelles respondent group in particular have evaluated the versions very differently (in spite of the fact that the only difference between the two is the accent in which the talk is presented). In fact results from workshops conducted so far show that the Indian English is evaluated more negatively on all the variables investigated. The seychelles respondents also evaluated the Indian English version significantly more negatively on the more evaluative statements which touched on aspects such as intelligence, level of education and the quality of the arguments presented.  The Swedish respondents have evaluated the two versions reasonably equally except for the variable ‘pronunciation’, where respondents seem to regard Indian English pronunciation as inferior to RP. 
Picture
Figure 1. Differences between perceptions of language performance conducted in RP (in blue) vs. Indian English (in red) among Seychelles respondents (dotted lines, N=79) and Swedish respondents (whole drawn lines, N=46).



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  • Home
    • Project description RAVE
    • Project description C-RAVE
  • Method
    • Case Production >
      • Contextualizing a Case
      • Recording & Voice Morphing
      • Other manipulation methods
      • Packaging
    • Response >
      • Perception Test
      • Pre-test/Post-test
    • Debriefing
  • Open Access Cases
    • Custody case
    • Youth language case
    • Indian vs British English
    • Disney discussion case
    • Personality factors case
    • Apology case
    • Reprimand case
    • Gender and leadership Scene 1
    • Gender and leadership Scene 2
    • Various material
  • Publications
    • Conference >
      • Keynote Speakers
      • Parallel Sessions: Wednesday
      • Parallel Sessions: Thursday
      • Symposium summary
  • Extra resources
    • Gender & Sexuality
    • Race & Ethnicity
    • Other Resources
  • About Us