Previous research on speech fluency and persuasiveness has generally focused on the effect that measures of speech fluency have on measures of perceived persuasiveness in native speech. In this...Show morePrevious research on speech fluency and persuasiveness has generally focused on the effect that measures of speech fluency have on measures of perceived persuasiveness in native speech. In this study an experiment was carried out to examine how the fluency measure of speech rate affects native and non-native speech in four different persuasive scenarios. Recordings of a native and non-native speaker were manipulated phonetically, resulting in fast and slow recordings for each scenario. Persuasiveness was measured on three dimensions, with one measure of belief change, and two measures of perceived persuasiveness: message perception and speaker perception. The results indicated that the persuasiveness of native and non-native speech is affected differently by speech fluency manipulations. A significant interaction was found for two of the three variables (belief change and speaker perception), indicating that the native speaker was more persuasive with a higher speech rate, whereas the persuasiveness of the non-native speaker was unaffected. For the message perception variable, there was no significant interaction effect, but there was a significant effect for fluency and nativeness, indicating the native speaker was more persuasive, and the fast speaker was more persuasiveShow less
