Arnold Schwarzenegger Now and Then

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This paper presents the results of a study examining Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pronunciation in his first language (L1), Austrian German, and his second language (L2), American English, over a period of 40 years. Schwarzenegger did not begin learning his second language until relatively late in life, when he emigrated to the USA at the age of 21. The investigation of his pronunciation development is based on three studies conducted using a corpus of English and German interviews. The audio recordings represent Schwarzenegger’s early (1970s/80s) and late (2010s) pronunciation. Studies I and II involve acoustic analyses of Schwarzenegger’s realisation of voice onset time contrasts and his production of monophthongs. The results show that, over time, his L1 pronunciation has, in some respects, converged with L2 pronunciation characteristics, illustrating the influence of the second language on segmental features of the first language. At the same time, it was observed that Schwarzenegger’s L2 tends to have moved further away from (monolingual) L2 norms; that is, over time – despite an increase in L2 experience – he has become less native-like. Study III comprises a perception study that investigates whether a group of 40 Austrian listeners perceive Schwarzenegger’s German pronunciation as more or less native-like compared to monolingual Austrian speakers. It also examined whether and to what extent a non-native accent in the L1 affects a speaker’s intelligibility. The results show that, compared to the Austrian control speakers, Schwarzenegger was indeed perceived as less native-like in his L1. At the same time, his pronunciation was judged to be clearly intelligible. Furthermore, the listeners’ linguistic background significantly influenced their perception of native-like speech, i.e. bilingual listeners were less likely to rate an accent as non-native than monolingual listeners.

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Kornder Lisa

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