Session 5B

L2 speakers have been found to be penalized for their foreign accent and grammatical errors (Fuertes et al., 2012; Vann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984). However, little is known about the role listeners' personality plays in how they perceive L2 speech. There is some recent evidence that individuals with different personality traits respond differently to grammatical errors in L2 writing (Boland & Queen, 2016) and speech (Lyall & Järvikivi, 2021) and in foreign accents (Gaffney & Côté, 2020). This suggests that listeners' personality traits could interact with the accent and grammaticality of L2 speech to affect the overall perception of it. 
To examine the hypothesis, 60 L1 English speakers (30 female; 30 unfamiliar with accented speech) were recruited to rate the acceptability of 40 English speech samples with or without grammatical errors (article errors). Speech samples were recorded by four speakers in different accents (British vs. Polish; female vs. male) and allocated with speaker voices counter-balanced. Participants' personality traits were measured via two personality scales (Big Five; BIS/BAS/FFFS).
The results suggest that a foreign accent "protects" the speaker from being penalized for grammatical errors, but the interaction is subject to personality. Compared with foreign accented speech, the acceptability ratings of L1 accented speech showed a larger decrease when grammatical errors were present, yet listeners who were more conscientious, extraverted or agreeable tended to give lower acceptability ratings to foreign accented speech, regardless of the inclusion of grammatical errors. Interestingly, the effects of Extraversion-Introversion and Agreeableness-Aggressiveness were non-linear-the differences in ratings of foreign accented speech were prominent predominantly among above-average Extraversion scorers, whereas listeners who were less agreeable (and thus more aggressive) tended to rate foreign accented speech as less acceptable. The results will be discussed in light of the conceptual frameworks of lexically-based personality models and the Interpersonal circumplex (Ansell & Pincus, 2004; De Raad & Mlacic, 2015).


Ansell, E. B., & Pincus, A. L. (2004). Interpersonal perceptions of the five-factor model of personality: An examination using the structural summary method for circumplex data. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 39(2), 167-201.
Boland, J. E., & Queen, R. (2016). If you're house is still available, send me an email: Personality influences reactions to written errors in email messages. PloS one, 11(3), e0149885.
De Raad, B., & Mlacic, B. (2015). Big five factor model, theory and structure. International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, 2, 559-566. 
Fuertes, J. N., Gottdiener, W. H., Martin, H., Gilbert, T. C., & Giles, H. (2012). A meta‐analysis of the effects of speakers' accents on interpersonal evaluations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42(1), 120-133.
Gaffney, C., & Côté, S. (2020). Does personality influence ratings of foreign accents?. Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, 6(1), 68-95.
Lyall, I. H., & Järvikivi, J. (2021). Listener's personality traits predict changes in pupil size during auditory language comprehension. Scientific reports, 11(1), 1-15.
Vann, R. J., Meyer, D. E., & Lorenz, F. O. (1984). Error gravity: A study of faculty opinion of ESL errors. Tesol Quarterly, 18(3), 427-440. 

There has been extensive research on heritage language (HL hereafter) speakers with various research perspectives. Although HL speakers from diverse backgrounds have been examined, to my knowledge, there has been no research which has specifically focused on those who are HL speakers of a specific Anatolian Arabic dialect, namely, Mardin dialect and who currently reside in different parts of Istanbul. For this reason, this study examines the experiences, attitudes and identities of 10 adults who are Arabic heritage language speakers living in Istanbul. The data collected through the interviews were transcribed and analysed by thematic analysis. The themes that emerged from the data were challenges experienced by heritage language speakers, attitudes towards heritage language and culture, (in)congruency between self- and other- ascribed identities, fixity and/or fluidity in the identity conceptualizations of heritage language learners, intergenerational transmission of heritage language. The findings showed that participants who were born in Mardin had a significant amount of HL experience and most participants experienced some challenges when they first started school. In addition, the participants had positive, negative or neutral attitudes towards Arabic. The negative attitudes mostly stemmed from the fear of social exclusion due to incorrect pronunciation or viewing their dialect as non-prestigious. Most of the participants had quite complex identities as fixity and fluidity co-existed in their identity conceptualizations. Lastly, the participants who were encouraged to learn Arabic by their parents wanted their children to learn Arabic. The results show identity is created as a result of the constant interaction among them and the findings confirm Shin's (2010) claim that HL speaker identity is a dynamic one and it is continuously shaped by both changing social contexts and developmental phases. In this study, the HL speakers mostly showed signs of "multifaceted and fluid identities" (Hillman, 2019). It is also obvious that HLLs in this study construct their own identities instead of passively accepting the pre-fixed identities (Koshiba and Kurata, 2012) and there are always context-specific issues behind the interest in maintaining HL as shown in this study as well (Makoni, 2018).
REFERENCES

Hillman, S. (2019). "I'm a Heritage Speaker of the Damascene Dialect of Arabic": Negotiating the Identity Label of Arabic Heritage Language Learner, Heritage Language Journal, 16(3), 296-317. 
Koshiba, K., and N. Kurata. (2012). "Language Identities of Japanese Home- Background Speakers and Their Language Learning Needs." Japanese Studies 32 (3): 357–375.
Makoni, B. (2018). Beyond Country of Birth: Heritage Language Learning and the Discursive Construction of Identities of Resistance, Heritage Language Journal, 15(1), 71-94.  
Shin, S. J. (2010). 'What about me? I'm not like Chinese but I'm not like American.': Heritage language learning and identity of mixed heritage adults. The Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 9(3), 203-219.