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Perceptual Dialectology

When Liz from Laramie, Wyoming, was hiking the Appalachian Trail, some fellow hikers and locals assumed from her accent that she grew up outside the United States. The assumptions made by people she met probably had more to do with the context rather than her own particular accent. The branch of linguistics called perceptual dialectology is devoted to how we perceive the speech of others. This is part of a complete episode.

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