The fluency principle: Why foreign accent strength negatively biases language attitudes

Abstract

Two experiments tested the prediction that heavy foreign-accented speakers are evaluated more negatively than mild foreign-accented speakers because the former are perceived as more prototypical (i.e., representative) of their respective group and their speech disrupts listeners' processing fluency (i.e., is more difficult to process). Participants listened to a mild or heavy Punjabi-(Study 1) or Mandarin-accented (Study 2) speaker. Compared to the mildaccented speaker, the heavy-accented speaker in both studies was attributed less status (but not solidarity), was perceived as more prototypical of their respective group, disrupted listeners' processing fluency, and elicited a more negative affective reaction. The negative effects of accent strength on status were mediated by processing fluency and sequentially by processing fluency and affect, but not by prototypicality. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.

Foreignness or Processing Fluency? On Understanding the Negative Bias Toward Foreign‐Accented Speakers

“…The debriefing scores showed that affect was significantly lower for the foreign candidate than for the native and reported candidates, which was in line with Dragojevic and colleagues’ claim that processing fluency impacts affect (Dragojevic, 2019; Dragojevic & Giles, 2016; Dragojevic et al., 2017). This idea was reinforced by the fact that the easier the processing fluency (as reflected by the score for comprehensibility), the higher the score for social variables (affect, status and solidarity), as revealed by exploratory correlations across social and linguistic variables (not registered).…”

“…However, although the variable foreignness stayed constant across the experiment, the variable processing fluency could vary across the experiment. Indeed, participants might first experience negative affect in response to difficulty in processing speech but might then adapt to a speaker's accent (Bradlow & Bent, 2008; Romero‐Rivas et al., 2015; but see, Floccia et al., 2009), which should lead to larger differences between the native candidate and the reported candidate than between the native candidate and the foreign candidate—in line with Dragojevic and colleagues’ (2016, 2017) reasoning about rewarding progress. One other possible case was that foreignness would be cancelled out when the foreign candidate's statements were reported by a native speaker.…”

“…In light of a new study (Dragojevic, 2019) and of previous work by Dragojevic and colleagues (Dragojevic & Giles, 2016; Dragojevic et al., 2017) showing the significant impact of processing fluency and affect on the perception of the speaker, we conducted an additional analysis that was not planned in Stage 1 of the registration. We computed correlations across the social and linguistic variables that are reported in Table 6.…”

“…Two recent studies directly tested the role of processing fluency on language attitudes toward native and foreign‐accented speech. Dragojevic and colleagues (Dragojevic & Giles, 2016; Dragojevic, Giles, Beck, & Tatum, 2017) argued that processing fluency can impact affect, which, consequently, has an impact on language attitudes. Indeed, if processing fluency were reduced and cognitive resources were highly taxed, the combination could generate a negative affect.…”

Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

“…For instance, in social-psychological research on listeners' attitudes, speakers whom listeners perceived as hard to understand were downgraded in listeners' affective and attitudinal evaluations. Such speakers were ascribed negative emotions of annoyance and irritation and labelled less intelligent and successful (Dragojevic et al, 2017). Similarly, in a study focusing on online learning, when students evaluated an instructional video narrated by the instructor who was hard to understand, they downgraded the instructor in their evaluations, expressing negative attitudes towards online coursework and evaluating video content as more difficult, even though students' actual understanding of the video was not compromised (Sanchez & Khan, 2016).…”