When you spend a lot of time with a friend, do you notice that your accent changes?
Then you’re not alone, because a new study has found that people start talking to each other when they complete tasks together.
Researchers from Pennsylvania universities conducted a study to examine “phonetic convergence,” a phenomenon that occurs when people begin to mimic the pronunciation of vowels when speaking to someone with a different accent.
Their results suggest that the more engaging a task, the higher the rate of phonetic convergence.
When you spend a lot of time with a friend, do you notice that your accent changes? If so, you’re not alone as a new study has found that people start talking to each other when they complete tasks together (stock image)
What is phonetic convergence?
Phonetic convergence is the process by which people’s accents become similar when they converse with one another.
The gender, race, and role of the speaker in the chat can affect how much or how little their voice changes.
Changes can include vowel length, voice onset time (VOT), and frequencies when someone speaks.
The study was conducted in a joint research project by Pennsylvania State University, Villanova University and the University of Pennsylvania.
In the study, participants worked together on a series of word-matching puzzles while solving either a “very exciting task” – navigating a virtual world in the computer game Minecraft – or a less exciting task – clicking words from a list.
The participants took on two roles, the director and the protester, with the director controlling the conversation.
The director moved the words and asked the matcher where he wanted them to go.
They were given 30 words to use while the scientists measured the phonetic features of the words uttered by each participant.
These included the frequencies, vowel length, and voice onset time (VOP), which is the amount of time between the release of a plosive and the onset of voice vibrations.
The study, published on ScienceDirect, titled “The Impact of Task Completion on Phonetic Convergence,” found that portions of participants’ accents, such as frequency and vowel length, changed and converged to sound more similar.
However, this was only heard during the highly interesting activity.
How often people picked up another person’s accent also depended on how engaged they were with the task at hand.
The more someone interfered in the conversation, the more affected his voice became.
High engagement tasks resulted in more convergence between the matcher and the director as the accents blend more. However, low-engagement tasks resulted in a lower convergence rate
Factors such as gender, race, and the interlocutor’s role in the conversation, such as whether they were leading the chat or just being a participant, also affected how easily another person’s accent was picked up.
However, low-engagement tasks didn’t result in as much convergence.
The study concluded: “The level of participants’ involvement in experimental tasks affects the extent to which they converge phonetically.
“In the present study, the high-engagement task resulted in greater convergence between interlocutors.
“This task provided participants with better use by engaging them in a virtual world to explore and interact with.”
Last year, a study also conducted by the University of Pennsylvania found that many of us mimic the voice of a friend or TV character after hearing them speak, a phenomenon known as “linguistic convergence.”
In the southern US states, people like Dolly Parton tend to use long vowels, so words like “ride” and “dine” with a southern pronunciation sound more like “rod” and “don”.
Linguist Lacey Wade found that southern US volunteers began to drawl after hearing someone with a heavy accent.
But it’s our anticipation of how that person might speak, and not the language itself, that can cause our language patterns to change.
In the southern US states, people like Dolly Parton tend to use long vowels, so words like “ride” and “dine” with a southern pronunciation sound more like “rod” and “don”.
So if someone who isn’t from the Southern US starts talking to someone from the South, they might start using Southern slang, like “y’all,” without realizing it.
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