Introduction

It has always fascinated me how impossible it is to understand and explain certain cultural phenomena. I recall stumbling upon a Japanese television show where women were competing for who among them could keep their head in a Komodo dragon's glass cage for the longest. I'm sure this feat had some shock value in Japan comparable to its effect on me, but the act still did not translate into either English or American culture.

Also fascinating is the way vocabulary adapts to culture. In France there is no word for “driveway” because they do not have enough driveways to need to label them. The average American can't tell you the difference between Rocamadour and Roblochon because they are cheeses primarily unique to France . But force someone to use that vocabulary and either you get remarkable circumlocution or a lot of confusion.

The purpose of my project was to see if I could discover some interesting discrepancies between narrative comprehension and reproduction abilities of native and nonnative speakers of English. I wanted to test the innate powers humans have to create vocabulary or circumlocute culprit misunderstandings when we cannot. I wanted to see if mentalese, the language of thought, was a strong enough buffer against strong foreign accents that complete comprehension between dialects of English could be achieved. I wanted to test the human ability to capture a detailed narrative and pass it to someone with whom they do not share a common first language. What better way to do this than with a children's game that regularly produces intriguing and humorous shortcomings in communication? Thus it was born: the scholarly game of telephone.

I began by making a short video, “The Friday Night Deadline”, of my friend Travis and his roommate Jorje performing relatively standard but somewhat difficult-to-describe tasks. What little dialogue and language there is in the film is in colloquial American English.

I then set up two four-person telephone chains, one of native English speakers and one of nonnative English speakers. I played the video to the first person in each chain, then took a WavePad recording of them describing in as much detail as they could recall the narrative of the film. I played their recording to the second person in each chain and then took a recording of the second person describing in as much detail as they could recall the narrative of the first person's recording, and so on.

Transcription

Native

Non-native

My name is Lauren Ramsey. I was born in Statesville , North Carolina . First language is English. And what I saw on the video—um- this guy comes in to his dorm room and he goes to sit at his desk and he looks at at his agenda and he had already finished all these tests and… his Spanish work and he thought he was done for the week… and so all he had to do was party . So he busted out some sweet dance moves and did that for a while and then I guess like then his roommate came? Or a friend came over and they partied together and, uh, his friend played the guitar and was wearing a hat and he held the microphone and they sang and then they looked at a lava lamp and then his friend left and he went to check his email and realized he wasn't done for the week. He still had to write an English paper , and so he got upset.

Um, I'm Sally Chan and I'm from Hong Kong and my first language is Cantonese. And, um, I, in the video I saw a guy, uh, walk in the dorm room after his classes and he look at his agenda and he find that he finish his schoolwork and he was so happy and he was like, “Oh, it's weekend party!” So, and then he…he started dancing ; his roommate came in and they were both so happy and they started, they like, partying . They sang, they do push-ups, and, yeah, do a little bit weird thing, ha. Afterward, uh, when his roommate on the phone he went outside, and the guy was checking his email and then he found that he has an English paper he hasn't do. So—and the deadline is already pass , so he was really... pissed off ? Or like, he was so stressed out , and yeah, lay on the floor .

Okay, my name is Clay; I was born in Orange County , North Carolina ; my native language is English. And what I heard on the recording of the girl was she was watching a video of a guy that walked into his dorm room and was looking at his agenda —found out that he didn't have anything to do. So he started dancing and wanted to party , …um… his, ha, his friend comes over that's wearing a hat , plays the guitar , and I guess they party , and look at a lava lamp , then he go—ha—then when his friend leaves, he goes back to his computer, checks his email , and finds that he is actually not done with his Spanish studies , aaand that's it. That's all I remember.

Hello, my name is Jordi. I am from Seville . My native language is Spanish. Annnd I have heard about girl from Hong Kong whose first language is Cantonese, and she saw a video, eghh, which she explains. Uhh.. this is what, what she saw in the video. Eh, she saw a guy coming into his dorm and checking his agenda . He realized that all his work is finished so he is now free to do whatever he wants. So he is start partying . That moment, eh, his roommate came in, and they start partying together. Then his roommate get a phone call aaand he leaves the room and goes to check his email. Then, checking the, the emails, he realized that there is, is still one homework —or something— some essay that he didn't turn in, and the deadline for that was already pass , so his… he realize he's in trouble , and lie on the floor complaining , or something like that. That's all.

Alright, my name is Kristin Wade, I was born in Wake County, um, Raleigh, um, my native language is English, and I heard on the recording that this guy, or this girl, um, or this girl saw this guy—ha!—um…check to see if he had anything to do on his agenda , saw he didn't have anything to do so he decided he wanted to, um, party and started dancing around and then his friend who plays the guitar comes over and they look at a lava lamp and party . And then his friend leaves and he um looks— checks his email and see that he actually has some Spanish to do . And that's the end.

Okay, my name's Chun-Win. Uh, I was born in Tai Pei, Taiwan , and my native language is Chinese and Taiwanese. Uh, I heard a guy from Spain and… talking like something happening in the video, and basically saying a guy came into his apartment and checking his agenda , and uh, knowing that he has done all his work , he has nothing to do, so, uh, he started partying . And later on, his roommate came home and they, they party together. But suddenly his roommate got a phone call , and, and so he left the room and so he ch—so the guy check his email and realize he have, uh, a assignment to do and it's already past the deadline . And so he…that's just— lie down... the floor... started complaining , something like that.

Alright, my name is Benjamin Harrison; I was born in Durham , North Carolina ; my native language is English; and what I heard on the recording was a guy who checked his planner and realized he had nothin' to do, so he decided that he wanted to party and he started dancin' around. And then his friend came over and had a guitar and they looked at the lava lamp and started to party some more, and...um… then his friend left, and he checked his email and realized he had some Spanish to do . And that was it.

Okay, um, my name is Marina ; I was born in Weisbaden , Germany ; my native language is German, and I heard that a young man entered his dorm room and he had the feeling that he had no assignments left to do so he started partying . And then another person—I think a male person—joined him, and they partied together. And he must have gotten a phone call , and all of a sudden he checked his email and saw that an assignment was due and—actually was past due —and he hadn't done it.

Analysis

I was initially very surprised at how similar the fourth-step products of the distorted narrative were—the nonnative speakers of English were able to retain an equal, if not higher, degree of detail and comprehension as those who had a common first language. Ben's narrative:

“ a guy who checked his planner and realized he had nothin' to do, so he decided that he wanted to party and he started dancin' around. And then his friend came over and had a guitar and they looked at the lava lamp and started to party some more, and...um… then his friend left, and he checked his email and realized he had some Spanish to do ”

is in no way a better summary of the film than Marina 's narrative:

“ a young man entered his dorm room and he had the feeling that he had no assignments left to do so he started partying . And then another person—I think a male person—joined him, and they partied together. And he must have gotten a phone call , and all of a sudden he checked his email and saw that an assignment was due and—actually was past due —and he hadn't done it ”,

though Ben had what would seem a distinct advantage by sharing a first language with the film and the rest of his telephone chain. I was thrown by this, because I had originally assumed that the nonnative speakers would have trouble retaining detail from the film if they were unfamiliar with words and phrases like “lava lamp”, “push-up contest”, “Week-by-Week”, and “term paper.” I thought that if a human step in the telephone chain had ready access to a super-sized, Americanized word bank, they could much more easily describe what happens in the film. This was ignorant of me, though, because it seems that humans don't really need the word bank to intimate a narrative to another because we don't listen to the language of a narrative, but to the meaning.

It is also interesting how the details retained pertain, among native speakers, mostly to actions and material things, whereas among nonnative speakers they pertain largely to emotion. While the phrases “start to party” and “check one's email” and their derivatives remain intact throughout both telephone chains, there is little other overlap. Notice the nonnative chain's attention to feelings and epiphany: Sally's “So happy…so happy…pissed off…stressed out”, Jordi's “realize(s) he's in trouble…lie on the floor complaining”, Chun-Win's “started complaining”, and Marina 's “had the feeling”. Conversely, the native speaker chain retains the words “dancing”, “guitar” and “lava lamp” perfectly throughout all four steps.

This project serves as further evidence that mentalese does effect our ability to communicate. Test subject Chase, a native English speaker not shown in the data section, was played Sally Chan's recording. Though he speaks English and Sally was speaking English in the recording, Chase could not comprehend her narrative in the slightest. However, Jordi, a non-native speaker, was not thrown by Sally's Cantonese accent, and effectively reproduced her narrative in his second language. Why is Native speakers' comprehension so jarred by an accent of a foreign language speaker? After all, it is all one language, why should it be so hard to understand? My guess would be that native speakers are used to a very quick translation into Mentalese from their own language, and become frustrated when this process is slowed. We appreciate the black-and-white of a native language and the other languages, and heavy foreign accents on a native language produce a gray area that some, like Chase, are unable to accept.

Finally, it's interesting how both native and nonnative English speakers do not only borrow stylistic grammar from the test subject before them in the chain, but also rely on their own generative grammar. For example: Chun-Win borrows Jordi's grammar in recreating the phrase “lies down on the floor complaining”, but has obviously passed the narrative through his own mentalese because he generates the original grammatical phrase “it is already past the deadline.” Similarly, Clay directly steals “plays the guitar” from Lauren, but translates Lauren's “busted out some sweet dance moves” into his mentalese and comes out with the grammatical phrase “started dancing.” Humans have keen powers of repetition and translation regardless of their distance grammatically from their native language. This supports mentalese—it does not matter where we start or finish; as long as we possess the power to translate a phrase into mentalese, we can comprehend it.

Sources:

Linguistic Society of America, What is an Accent?
 http://www.lsadc.org/faq/index.php?aaa=faqacc.htm

Amee P. Shah, Why Do Nonnative Speakers Have a Foreign Accent? A Three-Dimensional Perspective
http://www.acoustics.org/press/148th/shah.html

About the Author

Elizabeth Phillips is a first-year student at UNC. She was born in Sylva, NC, and spent her childhood in Asheville and Chapel Hill . She is a Dramatic Art and English double major with passions for words and the things that they make up—plays, books, good conversations.

She hopes to continue the Game of Telephone—both the purebred native and nonnative English speaking chains and in other possible manifestations of the game—

1. Native, nonnative, native, nonnative, …
2. Native, native, nonnative, nonnative,…
3. Spanish, English, Spanish, English, …
4. French, English, French, English, …
5. Elderly native, young native, elderly native…
6. BEV speaker, non-BEV native speaker, BEV speaker…
7. Creole, native, Creole, native…
8. Spoken word, sign language, spoken word, sign language…
9. And on
10. And on

--because she finds it utterly fascinating and infinitely possible. Elizabeth hopes to pursue further studies in linguistics, discourse analysis, and cognitive sciences in her undergraduate education at UNC and beyond.