Tag: Foregin Accent & Foreign Policy: An Analytical Perspective

Foreign Accent Production and Perception: An Acoustic Analysis of L2 Japanese

Presenter: Lucy Gubbins, Linguistics

Panel: Foregin Accent & Foreign Policy: An Analytical Perspective

Mentor: Kaori Idemaru, East Asian Languages and Literatures

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century E

The acquisition of a second language (L2) is wrought with potential difficulties. Not only must a learner establish grammatical competency in order to effectively communicate, but he/she must also adopt the pronunciation of the target language. This often proves to be an insurmountable task: even after acquiring native-like grammatical fluency in a second language, it is extremely difficult to speak without traces of a foreign accent. When native speakers are confronted with non-native speech, a number of acoustic characteristics can lead to the perception of foreign accent, which is what the present study explores. The first experiment investigates the acoustic qualities of vowels (i.e., F1 and F2) and stop consonants produced by native English speakers who are 2nd- and 4th-year learners of Japanese. The second experiment examines native listener judgments of foreign accent and how they compare with the segmental differences found in the production data. Preliminary results from the production experiment show that non-native learners differ significantly from native speakers in their production of the high back vowel /u/, as well as in the duration of voice-onset time before stop consonants. These findings reveal that even after significant exposure to Japanese in the classroom, L2 learners struggle to achieve native-like production of these features, giving language instructors significant insight into specific problem areas native English speakers might encounter when learning Japanese pronunciation.

Guns for Oil: An Analysis of Contemporary Chinese Weapons Sales to Africa in Exchange for Oil

Presenter: Lauren Dickey, Asian Studies & Chinese

Panel: Foregin Accent & Foreign Policy: An Analytical Perspective

Mentor: Maram Epstein, East Asian Languages and Literatures

AM Session Panels

Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm

Location: Century E

Beginning in 1949, China has gradually increased the scope of its weapons sales overseas to include 40 countries, 21 of which are located in Africa. With Chinese weapons sales in 2009 reaching 900 million U.S. dollars, the global community cannot help but pay attention to China’s overseas weapons sales model. At the same time, resource-rich African nations have become the center of China’s new geopolitical strategies and starting point for oil development and extraction programs. With decades of cooperative experience in the energy sector, Africa has become an important area through which China is able to further diversify its energy resources. In the process of China’s assistance to help Africa develop an oil market, many other forms of aid and investment were also necessary. The most important form of aid can be best seen through “goods for goods” bartering transactions, especially in the form of Chinese weapons for African oil. My paper examines the realities of weapons-for-oil transactions as well as other Chinese involvement in Africa’s natural resources and domestic economies, illustrating the implications for U.S.-China policy and the international community, in hopes that other researches will pay even closer attention to weapons-for-oil exchanges in the future of Sino-African relations.