The Pragmatics of Foreign Accents: The Social Costs and Benefits of Being a Non-Native Speaker

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition Vol. 49; no. 9; pp. 1505 - 1521
• Main Authors: Ip, Martin Ho Kwan, Papafragou, Anna
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Psychological Association 01.09.2023
• Subjects: Ability; Deception; Intelligibility; Native Speakers; Pragmatics; Pronunciation; Second Languages; Social Influences; Trust (Psychology); Validity
• ISSN: 0278-7393; 1939-1285
• DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001197

Speaking with a foreign accent has often been thought to carry several disadvantages. Here, we probe a potential social "advantage" of non-native compared to native speakers using spoken utterances that either obey or violate the pragmatic principle of Informativeness. In Experiment 1, we show that listeners form different impressions of native and non-native speakers with identical pragmatic behavior: in a context in which omitting information could be deceptive, people rated underinformative speakers more negatively on trustworthiness and interpersonal appeal compared to informative speakers, but this tendency was mitigated for speakers with foreign accents. Furthermore, this mitigating effect was strongest for less proficient non-native speakers who were presumably not fully responsible for their linguistic choices. In Experiment 2, social lenience for non-native speakers emerged even in a non-deceptive context. Contrary to previous studies, there was no consistent global bias against non-native speakers in either experiment, despite their lower intelligibility. Thus the fact that non-native speakers have imperfect control of the linguistic signal affects pragmatic inferences and social evaluation in ways that can lead to surprising social benefits.