Interacting with a speaker from a different French region: What is the impact on word recognition?

During a social interaction, speakers must consider what each other is saying to achieve mutual understanding. Since linguistic representations are believed to become more similar between speakers during an interaction to ensure successful communication, one might wonder whether word recognition can be affected when the two interlocutors are not from the same region. In this study, Northern French speakers, who merge the /e/-/ε/ contrast, engaged in an interactive map task with a Standard French speaker who produced this contrast. We measured whether Northern French speakers displayed a repetition priming effect on minimal pairs of French word forms differing in final /e/ and /ε/ phonemes, both before and after the interaction. A priming effect was found before and after the interaction, revealing that the same phonological form was still activated when recognizing French minimal pairs ending in /e/ and /ε/. This priming effect did not significantly differ before and after the interaction. Likewise, there was no significant change in /e/-/ε/ contrast production after the interaction. These findings suggest that phonological representations reflecting one's own regional variety are very robust during word recognition. The implications are discussed in light of the role of social interaction at the representational level.