Exploring Perceptions of Multilingualism in Music

Here is my Research Paper

The Significance of Perceptions with Multilingual in Music

How do differing languages influence our perceptions? I researched how people perceive languages from familiar to unfamiliar through multilingual music to see if there was influence from hearing diverse languages in music on how comfortable people felt.

Researcher

Sidnee Petter

Class of 2019

Initial Assumptions

Language exposure was believed to impact comfortability with diverse languages.

It was hypothesized that being bilingual or multilingual would lead to higher levels of comfort compared to those who speak only one language.

Statement

The understanding of how language is perceived is lacking in the field of linguistics. There are concerns of social attitudes and perceptions with exposure to foreign languages and has been studied heavily in education and studying abroad, however it is not understood in music. This problem impacts the understanding of social norms with varying languages. This led to investigating perceptions of languages in multilingual music.

Significance of Study

This study is significant because it had investigated how unfamiliar languages could cause people to feel and had applied this to how it can influence our culture as a whole in the United States. This also can be related to the perception of acceptance for other nations and thus may be applicable to how the United States can negotiate with other countries due to how comfortable one feels with varying languages.

Definitions and Variables

Multilingual: the use several languages.

-Used in reference to anyone speaking two or more languages and to the songs that were chosen for the survey which contained multiple languages.

Comfortability: is defined as the degree to which one feels at ease.

Language: exposure is the level of experience with speaking, studying or being exposed to other languages beyond one's native tongue.

Method of Study

A mixed method approach was used to investigate participants personal perceptions of their views of comfortability with multilingual music. The responses were then quantitated in order to analyze the results so that questions can be compared to see if there were any connections between answers. The survey was approved by the IRB and included an electronic consent form, eight questions for language exposure and then nine questions on comfortability and preferences for languages in music. Three multilingual songs were used for participants to listen to and rate their comfortability. Consent was required to participate. Qualitative data was required to understand personal perceptions of comfortability and quantitative results were necessary to comprehend trends of the results.

Important Sources

Previous scholarly works in the field of linguistics:

Larsen-Freeman (2018) showed that the social beliefs in a society impact learning a language.
Yang and Chen (2016) note that culture is necessary to understand and comprehend a language.
Nguyen and Coryell (2015) demonstrated that popular culture and social networks can influence perceptions of studying abroad.
Wang, Ahn, Kim and Lin-Siegler (2017) saw that there are misunderstandings for non-natives of a culture for the social knowledge as well as an accent of a non-native English speaker can highly impact what the perception of them is, such as they that found Americans prefer more mild accents and they are perceived as having higher intelligence.
Nikitina (2017) brought clarity with stereotypes in linguistics, noting that stereotypes can be promoted through social media and popular culture which could be the only outlet of information about a country.

Through these sources, it is clear that there is a social influence with language and its culture but what are the perceptions of the language itself? Do people feel comfortable with languages?

Multilingual Music

Music

Happy birthday by Victor Stumpf
Silent night by IllonAtzMusic
Twinkle twinkle little star by World Rhymes

Languages

English, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Chinese and Persian

Results

Three general songs that crossed several languages were used in a survey for participants to listen to and rate their perceptions of agreeance or disagreeance and level of comfort from very comfortable to very uncomfortable. Thirty six responses were collected with one third of participants being fluent in two or more languages and two thirds of participants being monolingual. 58.34% of participants disagreed to feeling uncomfortable. 13.89% of participants did experience some discomfort while listening to the multilingual music. 83.33% of multilinguals were comfortable hearing unfamiliar languages in music whereas monolinguals were slightly lower with 75% feeling comfortable. Then again, neither group reported feeling very uncomfortable, showing that a majority of people are fairly comfortable with listening to music in other languages. 55.56% of participants were previously exposed to multilingual music which we analyzed further in depth and had higher comfortability than all participants with 90% of participants feeling comfortable and no one in this group experienced any discomfort showing those with previous exposure to multilingual music have greater comfortability. 75% of participants wanted to be exposed to more multilingual music and 52.78% of respondents liked the multilingual music. This shows overall participants enjoyed the experience and want to increase their exposure to other languages.

Implications

This research can extend to the world of music being more globally aware and increasing the use for a variety of languages in the songs heard in the U.S. From exploring the perceptions of comfortability in multilingual music, the majority of participants felt comfortable and wanted to increase their music vocabulary to be more inclusive of other languages and highlights that the social perceptions in this research has a very open acceptance of other cultures through music and may apply to whole of the United States.

Conclusion and Future Directions

This investigation analyzed perceptions of comfortability with a variety of languages varying from familiar to unfamiliar in music. My hypothesis was not supported in this investigation as there was not a significant difference in comfortability between the multilingual group and the monolingual group, rather those who had more exposure to multilingual music had higher comfortability. Majority of participants (77.78%) did feel comfortable or very comfortable when listening to unfamiliar languages in music. Moreover, 75% of participants wanted to be exposed to more diverse music going beyond their native language. This revealed a desire for more lingual diversity in music and a general comfortability with multilingual songs in the United States. It is important to note that these findings can not be verified as they are not of a representative sample to be generalized to the population which was a major limitation in this study. Future research could investigate the frequency of exposure to multilingual music and the favorability of a language a person hears.

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