How “deep” is Dynamism? Revisiting the evaluation of Moroccan-flavored Netherlandic Dutch

Abstract

Abstract In this paper we report a new speaker evaluation experiment to follow up on an earlier study, which found that the Moroccan accent of Netherlandic Standard Dutch was generally downgraded. As in the previous study, both traditional Superiority evaluations and modern Dynamism considerations (pertaining to media cool) were extracted, albeit with greater methodological care: we included a three-level accent strength variable in the stimuli, and measured Dynamism-evaluations on independently validated scales. While mildly accented Moroccan-Dutch speech was deemed less inferior than its strongly accented counterpart (though not as superior as any indigenous speech), Moroccan-flavoured speech was found to be the most dynamic in general. It is argued that the new data account for the increasing vitality of Moroccan-accented speech much better than previous findings, but also, and contrary to previous claims, that the Dynamism evaluations which power this vitality are not implicit or subconscious.