Native Speaker Response to Non-Native Accent: A Review of Recent Research

Research has generally shown that without early exposure, non-native speakers cannot achieve a native-like accent in a foreign language (Gass & Selinker, 2001, p. 336). Differences in pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation remain. Nevertheless, accent has been shown to affect how native speakers (NSs) evaluate non-native speakers (NNSs). This single speech characteristic has been openly cited as justification for much broader judgments about individuals. Lippi-Green (1997), for example, highlights several cases in the U.S. in which NNSs lost jobs due to their accents, such as that of an Indian woman (who had studied English for over 20 years) deemed unfit for a librarian’s position because of her “‘heavy accent’” and “‘speech patterns’” (p. 153). Matsuda (1991) reports on U.S. doctors who lost their malpractice insurance because the company felt accent would prevent them from successfully defending themselves in a lawsuit (p. 1346). In light of the potentially high-stakes consequences of accent-based evaluation, particularly in major immigrant-receiving countries like the U.S., the goal of this paper is to examine recent contributions of language research to understanding NS attitude toward NNS accent. Specifically, this paper will address two questions relevant to the work of the past decade. First, what are the factors that affect NS attitudes toward accented speakers? This question has been investigated by a number of researchers, and the variety of accents, locations, and contexts examined in pursuit of an