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MIB guest talk: Chris Lee

Chris Lee from Dept of Psychology, Goldsmiths, London visits MIB and gives talk on the musical impact of Multicultural London English speech rhythm.

05.09.2016 | Hella Kastbjerg

Dato tir 27 sep
Tid 13:00 14:00
Sted Meeting room 5th floor, building 10G, Aarhus University Hospital, Nørrebrogade 44, Aarhus

TITLE:
The musical impact of Multicultural London English speech rhythm.

AUTHORS:
Christopher Lee, Lucinda Brown, Daniel Müllensiefen.  
Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London SE14 6NW.

ABSTRACT:
There is evidence that an emerging variety of English spoken by young Londoners, Multicultural London English (MLE), has a more even syllable rhythm than Southern British English (SBE). Given findings that native language rhythm influences the production of musical rhythms and text-setting, we investigated possible musical consequences of this development. We hypothesised that the lower vocalic durational variability in MLE and (putatively) less salient stress distinctions would go along with a preference by MLE speakers for lower melodic durational variability and a higher tolerance for stress mismatches (the non-coincidence of stress/beat strong-weak patterns) compared to SBE speakers. An analysis of two pop-chart song corpora by MLE and SBE artists confirmed that durational variability was lower in the MLE songs, and that there were more stress mismatches. In a follow-up experiment, MLE and SBE participants read four short English sentences and then rated text-settings in pairs of specially constructed song fragments with and without stress mismatches. MLE participants’ speech showed the expected lower variability in vocalic duration and syllabic prominence compared to SBE participants’ speech, while their text-setting ratings showed a greater tolerance of stress mismatches.

ALL ARE WELCOME!

Forskning, Alle grupper, CFIN, Musicinthebrain, Musicinthebrain