This dissertation examines whether and how psycholinguistic priming, and social knowledge are integrated in the identification of sociolinguistic variants. Using the English variable (ING), the alternation between -ing and -in' (e.g. thinking vs. thinkin') as a testing ground, this dissertation probes whether and how individuals utilize…

Purpose: Much of a child's day is spent listening to speech in the presence of background noise. Although accurate vowel perception is important for listeners' accurate speech perception and comprehension, little is known about children's vowel perception in noise. "Clear speech" is a speech style frequently used by talkers in the…

Six casual conversations between university undergraduates were tape recorded and transcribed in an effort to describe the politeness practices of men and women during ordinary conversation. The first stage of analysis involved dividing the transcripts into utterances or units of speech actions. The second stage of analysis involved coding each…

A study sought to determine what relationships existed between speech rate, speech pitch variation, speech loudness, and the personality assessments made by listeners. The subjects, 214 undergraduate speech communication students, listened to one of eight tape recordings made by a male speaker to represent all the combinations of the three…

This study investigates raters' identification of errors in the writing of an EFL student. Drawing on data collected from a correction task and a questionnaire, we examine the beliefs and practices of three distinct groups of 16 participants in each: native English speaking EFL teachers, Japanese speaking EFL teachers and educated native English…