Real-time speaker evaluation: How useful is it, and what does it measure?

Indexical associations are a crucial construct in third-wave variationist work, but little is understood about how perceivers incorporate indexical information over the course of sociolinguistic perception. In classic speaker evaluation, participants listen to a stimulus and report evaluations after listening, limiting our access to the moment-to-moment process of updating social percepts. Studies developing in-the-moment tools have combined methods development with substantive theoretical questions, hindering assessment. We test a continuous evaluation tool using a gestalt style shift and the English variables (ING) and like. The tool captures the expected reactions but has poor time granularity and very high variability. Divergence between slider responses and after-the-fact ratings suggests that the tasks may depend on a different mix of processes, underlining the multiplicity of sociolinguistic cognition processes.