My Fake American Accent Fake it 'til you make it.
According to an intriguing new study by the University of Chicago, speakers of English with a pronounced foreign accent were deemed less trustworthy than those who spoke with no accent. The study found that…”the thicker the speaker’s accent, the less truthful listeners rated the statement”. This, despite the fact that study participants were told that speakers were reading from prepared scripts and were not making up the statements themselves.
Boaz Keysar, one of the study’s lead authors, noted that “The accent makes it harder for people to understand what the non-native speaker is saying….They misattribute the difficulty of understanding the speech to the truthfulness of the statements.” This is an understandable and charitable conclusion to draw from the study, discounting entirely the very real possibility of prejudice being a factor. It would be interesting to find out if speakers were more inclined to consider a speaker with a foreign accent more or less trustworthy depending on where he or she was from. Let’s say a sharply dressed, handsome French tourist is lost in our city and asks for directions. Will we treat him any differently from, say, a Hispanic, African or Asian person who is also asking for directions in broken English? My guess (and I am not a Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago) is that the different contexts will yield different attitudes. Context, which the study authors rule out, is key.
Next time you speak with someone who is speaking your language in a strong accent, be patient. And remember times you’ve spoken a foreign language and struggled to be understood.
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