Feature attention and accent recognition: human listeners' responses to five Northern English accents.

ABSTRACT: This study investigates how human listeners perceive and locate Northern English accents, with a focus on the linguistic features that attract attention during accent recognition. Although sociolinguistic research often centers on specific phonetic variables, it is unclear whether these align with the cues non-linguists naturally notice when identifying regional varieties. To address this, we used a real-time linguistic attention method to examine which features listeners attended to as they attempted to identify the origin of speakers from five Northern English cities: Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. Crucially, listeners were not directed to focus on any particular features. Data from 98 participants revealed substantial variation in recognition accuracy. While Liv

SUBMITTER: Montgomery C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12713536 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature