Language attitudes, evaluative hierarchies and effects of misidentifying foreign-sounding accents in contemporary Sweden

Abstract Understanding how foreign-accented speech is perceived in majority societies is increasingly important in the context of global migration. Such research provides valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities encountered by international migrants, particularly regarding their prospects for social inclusion in key societal domains such as employment, housing, and education. This article presents key findings from a large-scale study on language attitudes in multilingual Sweden. A speaker evaluation experiment was conducted in which twelve foreign-sounding accents were assessed across multiple tasks. The study involved over 2,000 participants, selected to form a representative sample of the Swedish population. The results reveal a pronounced evaluative hierarchy of accents that mirrors broader societal rankings of languages based on status, prestige, and perceived social value. Accents associated with North-Western European languages were more accurately identified and more positively evaluated. In contrast, accents from other regions were more frequently misidentified and evaluated less favourably – particularly when the accent was perceived as originating from an L1 Arabic background. The analysis of these misidentifications reveals that listeners’ evaluations are often shaped less by the linguistic signal itself than by socially constructed assumptions about the speaker’s ethnic or cultural background. The article concludes with a critical methodological discussion highlighting the importance of including accent identification tasks in language attitude research.