INTERLINGUAL NEAR HOMOPHONIC WORDS AND PHRASES IN L2 LISTENING: EVIDENCE FROM MISHEARD SONG LYRICS

Takashi Otake
E-Listening Laboratory

ID 1329
[full paper]

Recent studies on bilingual spoken-word recognition have shown that bilinguals cannot deactivate the lexicon of the native language in a monolingual non-native situation due to the fact that language nonselective access is applied. This study attempted to examine whether this phenomenon could be observed in a unique Japanese word play called soramimi awaa in which Japanese misheard song lyrics were extracted from foreign songs. The analysis showed that both interlingual near homophones and phrases were observed, suggesting that at least Japanese bilinguals may experience the deactivation of the lexicon in their linguistic activity.