Welsh accents and social identity: A study on perceptions of new and traditional speakers

Mayr, Robert, Morris, Jonathan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3463-5277 and Gruffydd, Ianto ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6242-9411 2025. Welsh accents and social identity: A study on perceptions of new and traditional speakers. Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of an accent rating study of Welsh in which 59 raters were asked to listen to speech samples of three speaker groups (Welsh home language speakers, immersion education learners, and adult learners). The study aimed to ascertain (a) whether these groups are identifiable based on their accents, (b) how raters evaluate the three speaker groups socially, and (c) what phonetic features they associate with them. The results revealed that all groups could be identified well above chance and received positive social evaluations. However, traditional speakers were correctly identified significantly more often and were perceived more favourably in the social evaluations. In the feature analysis, new speakers’ accents were largely described as deviant from traditional speakers’ although some distinctive patterns were also identified. These findings have important implications for discussions surrounding accent bias and the perception of new speakers' accents in the context of minority language revitalisation.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Welsh Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics P Language and Literature > PB Modern European Languages > PB1001 Celtic languages and literature
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	0261-927X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 September 2025
Date of Acceptance:	19 August 2025
Last Modified:	03 Sep 2025 09:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/180808

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