What triggers linguistic bias against second-language accents? Examining the roles of accent strength, language, and group membership

This study investigates how linguistic bias towards second-language (L2) accents emerges within multilingual contexts, focusing on the social evaluation of accented English speech. This study examined attitudes towards Standard American English (SAE) and two second-language (L2) accents. Using a Verbal Guise Technique, evaluations of five accent categories were compared: SAE, weak and strong German accents, and weak and strong French accents. Participants comprised L1 English listeners and French- and German-English bilingual listeners in order to investigate the role of group membership in guiding negative bias. An additional, exploratory aspect of this research was examining how adults rate adult- versus child-speakers. This study found that (1) all L2 accents were dispreferred over SAE, with strong L2 accents being the most negatively evaluated, (2) weak German accents were slightly preferred over weak French accents, and (3) there was no main effect of group membership – all listener groups rated the accents similarly. These findings are interpreted in light of the theoretical claim that language attitudes are influenced by national stereotypes and processing ease of the accent.