This paper describes an experimental attempt to investigate the ‘cultural stereotype’ judgment of speech-rate, i.e. the judgment that people speaking in a language that is foreign to the listener always appear to be talking very rapidly. Two samples of speech were obtained from 6 native Japanese speakers and 6 native American-English speakers. Analyses of both samples failed to reveal significant differences in speech-rate between the two groups. Some implications of the results are formulated and finally several hypotheses are proposed to account for the ‘cultural stereotype’ judgment of speech rate.
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