“You Talk Funny”: How Accents Shape the Listener’s Perceptions of the Nonnative Speaker

Indianapolis, IN

This study was designed to examine the relationship between a speaker’s foreign accent and a listener’s evaluational response to that speaker. In addition, the study measured if the listener was prejudiced or not, and to what degree. Participants in this study were presented with four audio recordings of either a Spanish, Arabic, French, or American woman reading from a standard script. The participant answered questions to evaluate the speaker on both warmth and competence dimensions. The participants also responded to the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale and the Social Dominance Orientation scale; this data was used to develop a prejudice score for the listener. It is expected that participants who scored low on the prejudice measure will have rated all speakers more positively in comparison to those with high prejudice ratings. For the participants who scored higher on the prejudice measure, it is predicted that their warmth and competence ratings will be more negative in response to the Spanish and Arabic speakers and will be more consistent with the low prejudice participants for the American speaker. It is expected that the pattern of results will reflect the notion that people who hold stereotypes and prejudices towards other groups will respond to the foreign accented speakers more negatively, whereas people who hold fewer negative attitudes towards different groups will respond in a more positive way. This research will shed light on how implicit attitudes may influence behavioral responses to people who are identified as “foreign”.