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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Commun.
Sec. Language Communication
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1462013

Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour

Provisionally accepted
Alice Paver Alice Paver 1*David Wright David Wright 2Natalie Braber Natalie Braber 2Nikolas Pautz Nikolas Pautz 2
  • 1 University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • 2 Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This paper reports the findings from a multidisciplinary and cross-institutional Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project called 'Improving Voice Identification Procedures' (IVIP). People harbour stereotypes about particular accents, and those judgements may be brought with them into the legal domain. Considering the potential consequences of accent judgements by witnesses and jurors, this study examines the relationship between characteristics and the likelihood of acting in certain criminal and non-criminal ways. Overall, 180 participants completed an accent judgement task, rating 10 regionally-accented voices on a range of traits and behaviours using a wider range of accents, behaviours and criminal offences than previous research. Results indicate that evaluations of perceived characteristics based on accent translate into evaluations of likely behaviours. The discussion explores the forensic implications of the relationships between perceived status and criminality, as well as between solidarity judgements and morally good actions. We emphasise the need for nuanced understanding of how accents are evaluated when it comes to different crime types.

    Keywords: forensic linguistics1, accent discrimination2, accent judgements3, UK accents4, forensic phonetics5, forensic speech science6, guilt perception7

    Received: 09 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Paver, Wright, Braber and Pautz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Alice Paver, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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