语音 AI 中的地域口音感知与言语顺应研究：以纽卡斯尔英语（Geordie）使用者为例
"It Would Make a Geordie Feel at Home": Regional Accent Perceptions and Speech Accommodation in Voice AI
AI 导读
一项针对纽卡斯尔英语（Geordie）使用者的研究考察了用户对语音助手（VA）口音的感知及对语音技术的言语顺应。参与者和分别使用 Geordie 口音与英格兰南部标准英语（SSBE）的模拟语音助手交互后发现：Geordie 语音带来亲切感与本地归属感，但被认为专业性和权威感不足，SSBE 则更中立、清晰、可信。
正文 · 原文
Abstract:Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems often perform less accurately for speakers of regional dialects, but less is known about how users respond to these limitations and how regional voices produced by voice assistants (VAs) are evaluated through a sociolinguistic lens. This study investigates these issues among speakers of Newcastle English (Geordies), examining both linguistic accommodation to voice technologies and perceptions of regional versus mainstream-accented VA voices. Participants interacted with a simulated VA that spoke either Newcastle English or Standard Southern British English (SSBE). They subsequently completed semi-structured interviews about their experiences with the experimental VA and voice technologies, language use, accent attitudes, and place orientation. The findings reveal a two-way process of sociolinguistic bias. The Geordie VA was associated with familiarity, warmth, personality, and local belonging, but also with concerns about professionalism and authority, whereas the SSBE voice was perceived as more neutral, clear, and credible. Participants also reported adapting their speech when voice technologies failed to recognise them, most commonly by shifting to a more mainstream accent, enunciating more clearly, and speaking more slowly. These strategies are similar to accommodation in human-human interaction and reflect users' perceptions of what technologies can recognise, also known as perceived intelligibility pressures. Overall, the findings demonstrate that voice technologies can reproduce existing accent biases both by encouraging users to suppress regional features and by activating established social stereotypes through synthetic voices. The study positions sociolinguistics as a bridge between understanding human-AI interaction and designing inclusive technologies around users' own linguistic priorities.
| Comments: | 50 pages, 5 figures |
| Subjects: | Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Computation and Language (cs.CL) |
| ACM classes: | H.5.2; I.2.7; J.5; J.4 |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2610.38005 [cs.HC] |
| (or arXiv:2610.38005v1 [cs.HC] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.38005 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite |
Submission history
From: Kevin Tang [view email]
[v1]
Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:56:56 UTC (2,128 KB)
来源：arXiv cs.AI · arxiv.org