Phonetic convergence and divergence in the American Midwest

The magnitude of phonetic convergence in word shadowing is affected by phonetic factors, including the shadowers’ phonetic distance from the model talker, and social factors, including the perceived prestige of the model talker’s variety. The current study explored the effects of these factors on phonetic convergence to the Northern dialect of American English by shadowers from the Midwestern United States. The shadowers read a set of target words to provide their baseline productions and then repeated the same target words after a native speaker of the Northern dialect. The target words contained stressed vowels that are phonetically shifted in the Northern dialect relative to other American English varieties. Phonetic convergence in word duration and vowel formant frequencies was observed for some vowel categories but not others. This phonetic selectivity was not driven by the acoustic distance between the shadowers’ baseline productions and the model talker’s productions. Phonetic convergence in word duration and vowel formant frequencies also varied depending on whether or not the shadowers were told where the model talker was from, leading to divergence for some dialect-specific features in the shadowing task. These findings provide additional evidence for the roles of phonetic and social factors in phonetic convergence.