Judging the immigrant : accents and attitudes

Spoken language as a means of communication contains huge amounts of information apart from the linguistic message that is conveyed. It is often the first channel of interaction between people and based on the speaker's manner of talk, we create a mental image of the speaker as a person, of the speaker's background, origin and personal qualities. Through five case studies, this dissertation investigates how immigrants to Sweden are judged based on their foreign accents and how the use