Americans’ Attitudes Toward Foreign-Accented Speakers: The Role of National Group Stereotypes and Processing Fluency

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between American listeners’ stereotypes, processing fluency, and attitudes toward speakers of five different foreign accents: French, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, and Vietnamese. For each accent, (a) listeners’ stereotypes toward the national group marked by the accent and (b) listeners’ fluency processing speech produced in the accent were both positively associated with their attitudes toward speakers who spoke in that accent, even after controlling for the other factor. These findings support the theoretical claim that language attitudes are a function of both stereotypes and processing fluency.

Keywords

language attitudes stereotypes processing fluency foreign accent intergroup social categorization metacognition

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