Spontaneous phonetic accommodation in standard Seoul Korean and Kyungsang Korean
This study investigates whether the pitch accent of the Kyungsang dialect is imitated by standard Seoul Korean speakers and whether non-tonal standard Seoul Korean is imitated by Kyungsang dialect speakers. To answer this question, two groups of participants completed an auditory naming task: Twenty Kyungsang speakers and fifteen Seoul speakers. Thirty-five words as produced by a female bidialect speaker of both standard Seoul Korean and the Kyungsang dialect served as stimuli for the shadowing task. The results suggest that overall, Kyungsang participants significantly converged toward the Seoul model talker, whereas Seoul participants significantly diverged from the Kyungsang model talker. In particular, female Seoul participants diverged more than male Seoul participants. Furthermore, Seoul participants who had positive attitudes toward the Kyungsang dialect were more likely to converge toward the Kyungsang model talker. However, for Kyungsang participants, their language attitudes did not predict the pattern of accommodation.
