Sociolinguists have discussed problematic language ideologies, such as Standard Language Ideology (Lippi-Green 1997) extensively and social perceptions of Standard English in the U.S and U.K are well documented. However, most work in this area has focused on perceptions of dialects within national contexts. This study makes a novel contribution to the study of language attitudes, investigating perceptions of British regional dialects within the U.S. A survey was created to gauge perceptions of five British regional dialects (Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, London). 49 survey participants listened to audio clips of British regional dialect speakers and then completed a mapping activity, answered perception questions, and ranked each speaker on specific qualities. Results showed that speaker region had a significant effect on perception of almost all variables at a statistically significant rate, despite unfamiliarity with all but the London dialect. Results suggest that although participants are largely unfamiliar with varieties of English in England outside of London, they assessed them by recruiting pre-existing stereotypes about vernacular dialects.

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In this study, two experiments are conducted to study language regard of Utah English. Experiment 1 is a draw-a-map study wherein participants were asked to mark areas on a map to of Utah where people speak differently (Preston 1989; Bucholtz et al. 2007). Experiment 2 uses a new research method, referred to here as a "perceptual audio survey". With this method, participants are asked to listen to recordings of native English speakers and identify where in Utah the speaker is likely from (Preston 1996:320-328; Cramer & Montgomery 2016:11). Crucially though, the speakers used in this experiment were from throughout the United States and not limited to Utah. Although participants were not explicitly deceived into believing these speakers were native Utahns, this is greatly implied. Generally, speakers with features of Southern United States English (SUSE) are far more likely to be placed in rural areas. The data also shows that participants favored placing age 20-49 speakers in urban areas and age 50+ speakers away from urban centers. The data from both experiments is cross-examined, revealing certain perceptual alignments and misalignments held by Utahns. Although speakers with features of SUSE are placed in rural areas, there is no objective linguistic evidence to show that speakers in these areas have features of SUSE. This illustrates that features of SUSE are indexed as being part of rural regions of Utah by Utahns. Other regions of Utah, namely the Wasatch Front and St. George, are labeled as "California" in the draw-a-map task. When presented with California English speakers in Experiment 2, however, participants mainly placed these speakers along the Wasatch Front and not St. George. So, perceptions of certain regions don't necessarily align across experiments. Overall, this study has a great deal to contribute to the ongoing studies of Utah English, language regard, and perceived Southern-ness in certain regions of rural America (Hall-Lew & Stephens 2012; Podesva et al. 2015).

Perceptual dialectology studies have shown that people have strong opinions about the number and placement of dialect regions. There has been relatively little research conducted in this area on Korean, however, with early studies using only short language attitude surveys. To address this gap in research, in the present study, I use the 'draw-­?a-­?map' task to examine perceptions of language variation in Korea. I ask respondents to draw a line around places in Korea where people speak differently and provide names, examples, and comments about the language spoken in those areas. With the resulting data, I use ArcGIS 10.0 software to quantitatively identify, aggregate, and map the most salient dialect areas and categories for subjects' perceptions. I also perform a content analysis of the qualitative data provided by respondents using 'keywords.' During this process, I categorize comments and labels given by respondents to find emerging themes. Finally, I stratify perceptions of respondents by demographic factors, e.g., age, sex, and urbanicity, that have often been found to be important in language variation and change. An analysis of these data suggests that Koreans' perceptions of dialect regions are not necessarily limited by administrative boundaries. In fact, the data reveal not only perceptions of dialect variation unassociated with geographic borders, but they also tap into the way people connect ideas about language and place. Results from this study have implications for language attitudes research, perceptual dialectology methodology, and the relationship between language and place in Korea.

Research into the dialects of the New England states (Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont) has traditionally split the region into distinct geographic regions based upon variations in production, primarily along an East-West border. Generally, such regions have been considered relatively stable in terms of their variation (Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006); however, recent work in the area has found that the traditional dialect boundaries have begun to shift (c.f. Stanford, Leddy-Cecere and Baclawski 2012). Such research has focused on very specific regional changes in production, ignoring the perceptual salience of the features observed to be in flux. To date very few studies (Ravindranath and Fernandes 2014) have examined how New Englanders perceive the regional divisions, with emphasis on the collected regions while not focusing specifically on how regions view each other in terms of difference and similarity. This study examines regional perceptions of dialects in the New England states as seen by a small subset of New Englanders, predominantly residents of Maine and Massachusetts, through two studies: one conducted using a new web-based approach and another using the traditional pen-and-paper method of perceptual dialectology. Speakers have been asked to identify areas with differing varieties through the draw-a-map task (Preston 1989). These responses are then aggregated using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), contrasting results between the two methods. Results are used to identify areas of salient dialectal features across New England, informing contemporary and future research into language change in a region considered as stable. Additionally, methodological concerns and advances are addressed.

The subject of this thesis is the French language in the Franco-Belgian borderland. More specifically, it investigates language, linguistic perceptions and language attitudes in the French-speaking part of Belgium which borders France. The study takes a variationist approach and is grounded in sociolinguistic theory, but it also draws on theories and methodologies from elsewhere in the social sciences. Two questions are at the heart of this study: how do people speak French in the Belgian borderland and why do they speak that way? To answer the research questions, speech and questionnaire data were gathered from 39 informants living in the borderland city of Tournai and its surrounding area. With this data, a variety of analyses were performed. Sociophonetic investigations were carried out on two phonological variables, namely the vocalic oppositions /e/-/ɛ/ and /o/-/ɔ/, draw-a-map task perceptual data were analysed through a ‘visual methods’ lens, and attitudinal data were also examined. Social variation in linguistic behaviour, perceptions and language attitudes was also analysed. The notions of ‘space’, ‘place’ and ‘spatiality’ were accorded considerable importance: the interactions between language and ‘space’ as the factors of ‘mobility’, ‘media consumption’, ‘sense of place’ and ‘regional belonging’ were also examined. The findings include that French in the Belgian borderland is more similar to that in France than to elsewhere in Francophone Belgium and that this is due to a number of factors. Moreover, the French in the borderland appears to be converging on that in France, although some differences persist. It was also found that spatial factors interact with both linguistic and social ones. Finally, it was concluded that whilst there is no longer a physical barrier at the national border, it persists to an extent as a psychological one, and this has ramifications for borderlanders’ behaviour: be it linguistic or otherwise.

The current study implements a speech perception experiment that interrogates local perceptions of Spanish varieties in Miami. Participants (N=292) listened to recordings of three Spanish varieties (Peninsular, Highland Colombian, and Post-Castro Cuban) and were given background information about the speakers, including the parents’ country of origin. In certain cases, the parents’ national-origin label matched the country of origin of the speaker, but otherwise the background information and voices were mismatched. The manipulation distinguishes perceptions determined by bottom-up cues (dialect) from top-down ones (social information). Participants then rated each voice for a range of personal characteristics and answered hypothetical questions about the speakers’ employment, family, and income. Results show clear top-down effects of the social information that often drive perceptions up or down depending on the traits themselves. Additionally, the data suggest differences in perceptions between Hispanic/non-Hispanic and Cuban/non-Cuban participants, although the Cuban participants do not drive the Hispanic participants’ perceptions.

This study examines Slovak dialect perceptions from 311 participants in 9 municipalities in Slovakia. Data were collected between 2016 and 2017, utilizing a map task, degree of difference ratings, and other Likert scale tasks to assess participants’ perceptions of and attitudes about dialects in Slovakia. Participants received blank maps of Slovakia on which to elicit participants’ perceptions of where isoglosses (dialect boundaries) lie. They drew their own isoglosses and were asked to label each dialect region contained within them. Content Analysis was used to code each label for semantic field in order to create composite maps for each label. After analyzing data from each municipality separately, 22 salient categories emerged. To be determined salient in this study, a category had to be marked by at least ten percent of participants per municipality. The most salient boundaries that emerged from this study were those between central (“correct”) Slovak and “other,” “not central” Slovak; those between “The East” and the rest of Slovakia, and those between “The South” (or, more accurately, “The Hungarian South”) and the rest of Slovakia. This thesis explores those ideologies in detail, and takes Nitra as a case study for the discussion.

This paper examines the perceptions of Kenyans towards the way other Kenyans speak Swahili from a Folklinguistic perspective. The study involved two main tasks. In the first task, informants were provided with blank maps of the country and asked to identify areas where they thought there was a distinct way of speaking Swahili. In the second task, they were provided with the same map showing Kenyan’s eight provinces and asked to rank them in terms of correctness, attractiveness and closeness to the way they speak Swahili. The results show little or no difference between the rankings of correctness versus pleasantness of Swahili varieties. The study also shows that Kenyans do not identify with the normative variety modeled on the standardized or Kenyan coastal Swahili which is used in the schools or mass media. Similar to other studies in perceptual dialectology, the informants’ judgments were influenced by their background knowledge and stereotypes about different regions that have little or no relationship with linguistics factors per se. Unlike other studies in perceptual dialectology however, languages that are not the object of study have a strong influence on respondents’ perceptions. Beside the ethnic stereotypes that characterize Kenya’s multilingual discourse, Kenyans’ attitudes towards varieties of Swahili seem to be filtered through the lens of a competitive hegemonic language that has enjoyed historical advantage. As a result, the promotion of an idealized variety of Swahili in light of the dominance of English and the continued use of local languages is not likely to increase its acceptability as a national and official language.

<p>This essay deals with the use of linguistic stereotypes in Hollywood movies. It investigates whether attitudes towards English dialects found in studies on perceptual dialectology are reflected in the selected movies and discusses the notion of linguistic identity and how standard and nonstandard speech, respectively, are used symbolically to emphasize features of characters in eleven movies from three different movie series, namely <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>, <em>Star Wars</em> and <em>Transformers</em>, with a main focus on syntactic and phonological dimensions. The essay finds a correlation between standard speech and features of competence and wisdom, and nonstandard speech and features of solidarity, sociability and traits of stupidity and humor. Moreover, very specific perceptions of certain varieties of English are probably utilized as amplifiers of equally specific characteristics of some characters. The use of dialects and accents in these movies is probably intentional and not coincidental.</p>