I'll be the judge of that: Diversity in social perceptions of (ING)

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines divergent listener perceptions with an expanded form of the Matched Guise Technique, using 32 matched pairs of short recordings of natural speech. Social evaluations were collected in open-ended interviews (N = 55) and an online experiment (N = 124). Three speakers are described who prompted disagreement about the English variable (ING). One's -ing use is seen by some as more intelligent and by others as annoying, less intelligent, and trying to impress. Another's -in guise is seen as compassionate by some and as condescending by others, while a third, when using -in, is seen by some as annoying and less masculine, while others describe him as a masculine “jock.” These findings show that listeners shift their interpretations of a linguistic resource, highlighting the ambiguous role intention plays in social meaning and calling into question long-held assumptions about the need for conscious introspection in sociolinguistic perception.