Cypriot Greek has a particularly distinct character and vocabulary of its own and many modern Greeks perceive Cypriots to be of a different culture than their own (Terkourafi 2007). The proposed experiment examines how even Greek-Americans have internalized stereotypes attached to dialects. Dialect variation is perceived as a cultural and economic marker, not simply one of geography. Methodology

In this experiment, the speech patterns of different Greeks reading a variety of relatively neutral passages will be recorded. These recordings will then be presented to a cross-section of both native Greeks and to Greek-Americans, and the recordings will be rated upon their perceptions of the speakers. The recorded passages will feature speakers from locations both in the northern and southern mainland, and a variety of Greek islands of various locations. The speakers will be 'rated' based upon their perceived social class, intelligence, positive and negative feelings about the speaker, and levels of trust.

It will be hypothesized that both native and Greek-American speakers will still judge Greeks based upon perceived social class, due to the dialectical features of the recordings' grammatical structure, pronunciation, and colloquialisms and variation from that of Standard Modern Greek. Additional features of interest in the experiment will be to examine if age of the raters affects their perceptions...

The recorded voices of the speakers will likewise be a mix of old and young, male and female, to reduce subjective biases not attached to social class and geographic location. Finally, all of the participants in the study will be asked to respond in a qualitative fashion to the recording, and responses will be examined for any additional input or potential biases on the part of the test subjects.