‘One of them sounds sort of Glasgow Uni-ish’. Social judgements and fine phonetic variation in Glasgow

Sociophonetic research (e.g. Strand, 1999 and Campbell-Kibler, 2007) has shown that speakers’ phonetic variation can affect how others socially evaluate them, and production studies (e.g. Stuart-Smith et al., 2007) have shown that such variation exists in Glasgow along the traditional social class divide. In order to investigate the production/perception link of listeners in Glasgow, we carried out a matched guise experiment designed to test the association between fine phonetic variation and social judgements. Using brand logos as our independent variable (a methodology recently adopted by Kervyn et al., in press), we built a believable set of social practices for our participants to anchor their phonetic evaluations on. Based on the results of four phonetic variables, we found that schema activation led listeners to judge phonetically similar stimuli in markedly different ways. This study adds to the results of the production studies by showing that a significant relationship exists between phonetic variation and social judgements. The results also show that listeners are sensitive to phonetic variation in Glasgow, and crucially, that they are easily able to categorise this variation according to associated conceptions of local social identities.

► We test the perception of fine phonetic variation in Glasgow.
► We investigate whether people link brand identities with language style variation.
► We look at a newly talked about accent, the Glasgow Uni accent.
► Glasgow listeners can categorise fine phonetic variation using brand logos to aid them.
► Local listeners are aware of the new Glasgow Uni accent style.