Listener Commentary Reveals the Social Salience of Accent Features

ABSTRACT This paper examines how listeners from two regions of England perceive and describe Northern English accents. Using the Salient Language in Context (SLIC) methodology, 94 respondents from two regions of England listened to recorded voices, clicking when they noticed features and providing open‐ended comments. The analysis shows that the type of listener comment was strongly conditioned by the speech sample and listener background. Listeners explained what they heard by naming or describing sounds, representing pronunciation in writing, reflecting on recognition, or linking voices to other accents, speakers, places, and varieties. The findings show that listener commentary is not merely supplementary to perception, but part of the process through which accents are interpreted and given social meaning. By tracing these processes in real time, the study contributes new evidence to debates on indexicality, salience, linguistic awareness, and enregisterment, offering a theoretical account of how social meanings of language are continually reproduced.