This study analyzes the use of linguistic stereotypes in two fantasy role-playing games, Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt and Dragon Age: Origins with a focus on phonology. It investigates how accent stereotypes are used and why they are important for characters in video games, for example regarding prestige and attractiveness. It analyzes each character from a character type perspective: hero, villain, comic-relief, mentor and lover. The results show that there are accent stereotypes in fantasy role-playing games and that they are, most likely, deliberately placed as such. It also shows that standard variations of English are mainly used for characters that serves a purpose to the story while non-standard variations are used for characters that serves no purpose to the game other than working as tools to enrich the world with a sense of life.

<p>Society exhibits a wide variety of different languages with various prominent features. At the same time as we honour diversity, however our civilisation is coloured with prejudice and preconceptions. Even if there is a rather liberal view on language use today, dialects and accents still carry positive and negative connotations for a majority of citizens. Research shows, that we are prejudiced and that we have predetermined ideas when it comes to certain language varieties.</p><p>In this study, I take up four varieties of Standard English: American, English, Australian and Scottish. I focus on the associations Swedish students make when it comes to these four language varieties and how this transforms into attitudes towards the speakers. A language attitude study is carried out by using a modified Matched Guise Test. I explain the difference between dialect and accent, as well as societal attitudes to language varieties and present some prominent linguists and their methods. Finally, I draw some conclusions by comparing my results to previous findings.</p>

<p>Psychology of music has shown renewed interest in how music expresses emotion to listeners. However, there is an obvious lack of research on how interactions between musical factors such as harmony, rhythm, melodic contour, loudness, and articulation may affect perceived emotion. From previous literature on music analysis and music cognition there is evidence that tonality may be activated and affected by rhythm and melody. These ideas generated hypotheses regarding melodic organization and performance, for instance, (a) certain notes in a melodic structure have expressive potentials due to their place in the key/chord, (b) these notes could be activated by accents in the melodic structure and/or in live music performance. In Study I, a simple tune was systematically manipulated with regard to harmonic progression, rhythm and melodic contour. Listener ratings of the resulting versions showed that perceived structure (instability, complexity, tension) and emotion (sadness, anger, expressivity) could be partly interpreted as resulting from accent structures and stress on certain notes. In Study II, musicians were asked to perform some of the above-mentioned versions so as to express happiness, sadness, tenderness and anger. The performers used loudness and articulation to compensate for lack of adequate inherent expression in melodies. They also highlighted certain notes of relevance for the emotional meaning by means of stress in articulation, loudness and timing. In Study III, simple three-note sequences were manipulated with regard to melodic, metric and rhythmic accents as well as (computer-) performed accents (loudness, articulation and timing) on certain target notes. Listening tests showed that accent on a tense note enhanced perceived anger. A note essential for the identity of major mode affected perception of happiness, whereas a note essential for minor mode affected perception of sadness. The results in this thesis have implications for a dynamic view of melodic organization and performance.</p>

Psychology of music has shown renewed interest in how music expresses emotion to listeners. However, there is an obvious lack of research on how interactions between musical factors such as harmony, rhythm, melodic contour, loudness, and articulation may affect perceived emotion. From previous literature on music analysis and music cognition there is evidence that tonality may be activated and affected by rhythm and melody. These ideas generated hypotheses regarding melodic organization and performance, for instance, (a) certain notes in a melodic structure have expressive potentials due to their place in the key/chord, (b) these notes could be activated by accents in the melodic structure and/or in live music performance. In Study I, a simple tune was systematically manipulated with regard to harmonic progression, rhythm and melodic contour. Listener ratings of the resulting versions showed that perceived structure (instability, complexity, tension) and emotion (sadness, anger, expressivity) could be partly interpreted as resulting from accent structures and stress on certain notes. In Study II, musicians were asked to perform some of the above-mentioned versions so as to express happiness, sadness, tenderness and anger. The performers used loudness and articulation to compensate for lack of adequate inherent expression in melodies. They also highlighted certain notes of relevance for the emotional meaning by means of stress in articulation, loudness and timing. In Study III, simple three-note sequences were manipulated with regard to melodic, metric and rhythmic accents as well as (computer-) performed accents (loudness, articulation and timing) on certain target notes. Listening tests showed that accent on a tense note enhanced perceived anger. A note essential for the identity of major mode affected perception of happiness, whereas a note essential for minor mode affected perception of sadness. The results in this thesis have implications for a dynamic view of melodic organization and performance.

published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Technological advancements in the recent past have provided new methods for learning to speak English as a second language (ESL). The majority of accent reduction training regimes nowadays involve the use of different media as teaching and learning cues such as video or audio signals. However, few such programs have been proven to actually provide efficient and useful feed back to ESL learners, and few offers evidence proving that such multisensory approach of accent reduction is superior to traditional unisensory (auditory-only) approach. The present study intended to design and assess the effectiveness and efficacy of a multisensory, acoustics-based accent reduction training system that is capable of training foreign speakers to correctly produce English vowels by providing instantaneous auditory and visual feedback to the users. The study also validated the system against traditional accent modification regimes by objectively comparing the efficacy of such system with traditional accent reduction training. Results indicate that multimedia-based training with instantaneous visual and auditory feedback yielded significant improvement in accent reduction. / published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Philosophy

This report first reviews issues emerging from English usage as a lingua franca, including distinctions among errors and variations in L2 English, attitudes toward L2-accented English, and communication strategies among non-native English speakers. Informed by the English learning as a second language literature, this report provides some suggestions for English teachers in Taiwan to help their students improve interactions with English speakers around the world. These suggestions involve promoting students’ respect for errors and accents in different varieties of English, which is expected to help students improve their own learning habits in order to lower their concerns about their “Taiwanese English.” The suggestions also encourage teachers to integrate issues regarding communication among non-native English speakers into English classes since these issues are often not the focus of traditional English classes in Taiwan. / text

This study proposes that metrical constituents are inherently headless and stress is autosegmental. Chapter 2 argues that, since stress is the only diagnostic for the presence of a metrical head, the latter is redundant and must be eliminated from phonological theory. Further arguments for the inherent headlessness of feet are cited fl:om the theory of prosodic morphology (McCarthy and Prince 1990, Crowhurst 1991b) and from the facts of Yidinʸ stress (Dixon 1977, Crowhurst 1991a, Crowhurst and Hewitt, to appear). Next, stress is shown to exhibit the following auto segmental properties: stability (Bedouin Hijazi Arabic) , morphemic stress (Spanish, Turkish, Tagalog) and the ability to float (Mayo, Tagalog). After comparing the properties of stress with those of autosegments, it is concluded that stress is an autosegment. Assuming that feet can be either disyllabic, bimoraic or iambic (Hayes 1991), the above conclusion predicts the existence of five types of binary stressed feet. These are the left- and right-stressed syllabic foot, instantiated by Warao and Mayo, respectively, the left- and right-stressed moraic foot, instantiated by Cairene Arabic and Turkish, respectively, and the iambic foot, instantiated by Hixkaryana. The asymmetric nature of the iamb is attributed to the Weight-to-Stress Principle (Prince 1990), which allows stress to be assigned directly to heavy syllables. Furthermore, this principle predict6 all and only the attested types of unbounded stress systems. Chapter 5 argues that stressless feet and unfooted stresses are instantiated in Mayo, and the theories of Halle and Vergnaud 1987a, b and Hayes 1987, 1991 are shown to be incapable of accounting for these facts. The autosegmental theory of stress advances phonological theory in three ways. First, it eliminates most of the principles and devices which up to now have been used only to describe stress, leaving only the abstract stress autosegment which is itself subject to the principles of autosegmental theory. Second, this approach attributes many of the apparent differences between stress and tone to differences in their respective domains rather than differences in their formal properties. Third, the autosegmental theory of stress facilitates the formalization of a number of stress systems with heretofore complex analyses, including Yidinʸ, Mayo, Cairene Arabic, Turkish, Khalkha Mongolian and Tagalog.

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Blackfoot (Siksika), an Algonquian language spoken in Southern Alberta and in Northwestern Montana, is claimed to have a pitch-accent system (Frantz 1991). However, no complete analysis of the Blackfoot word accent system is available in the literature. This thesis examines Blackfoot nominal accent by means of metrical analysis (Halle and Vergnaud 1987) in Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993). All of the data in this thesis are elicited from native speakers of Blackfoot. Regardless of noun type, every word contains one and only one pitch peak. Bare nouns (mono-morphemic nouns) and relational nouns (dependent nouns) show that Blackfoot has a mixed predictable and lexical accent system. Accent is quantity-sensitive, i.e. a heavy syllable attracts accent, while in nouns which contain no heavy syllable or more than one heavy syllable, it is lexically specified. An interesting contrast is found in long vowels - they contrast a high-level pitch, a falling pitch, and a rising pitch. Derived nouns (compounds) demonstrate four kinds of accent patterns, depending on the status (free vs. bound) and the accentual property (accented vs. unaccented) of morphemes. The leftmost accent of the compound members is retained, but the accent shifts to the juncture of them if it is word-final. If compound members are unaccented, the accent is assigned to word-final position by default. Speaker variation also occurs. One speaker systematically changes vowel length depending on the type of accented syllable, while the other speaker shows a wide variety of accent patterns. This thesis concludes that all the accent patterns can be accounted for by a single ranking of constraints in an OT analysis, in spite of the fact that the accent system is both lexical and predictable. Addition of constraints is needed specifically for compounds! Speaker variation is accounted for by reranking the same set of constraints. Priority is given to constraints that refer to the predictable accent in the grammar of one speaker. The lexical information is more respected in the other speaker's grammar. In addition to the analysis of general pitch-accent patterns, four types of irregular patterns are examined. The conclusions reached in this thesis demonstrate that the accent system interacts with other phonological properties of Blackfoot.