The Role of Socio-indexical Information in Regional Accent Perception by Five to Seven Year Old Children.

Abstract

Sixty-six English-speaking children in Philadelphia aged 5;0-7;0 years were assessed on their meta-linguistic awareness of regional accent and its socio-indices, as well as the amounts of exposure they had to regional variation. Two experiments then tested whether the children could discriminate between a familiar and an unfamiliar regional accent, and whether any evidence of use of social indices in discrimination could be found. Results show that children can discriminate between regional accents, and they draw on socio-indexical information when doing so. The results also suggest that socio-indexical information is interpretable only for familiar varieties, and isn’t dependent on a generalized understanding of regional variation, or knowledge of a second regional variety. Finally, children’s linguistic background is found to influence how they apply socio-indexical knowledge to the task of discrimination.