Our project has the overarching goal of gaining more insight into the perception processes of foreign language accents. We aim to show that perception is not only based on the linguistic signal, but is a much more complex phenomenon. In our study we will examine factors that relate to (i) the signal, (ii) the speaker, and (iii) the listener in the German-Polish context. Of particular importance are the following questions:
Question 1: If both phonetic and grammatical features influence the perception of foreign language accent, are there differences in their weighting? Are we more sensitive to phonetic pecularities and do we turn a deaf ear to grammatical mistakes?
Question 2: To what extent does the attitude of the listener towards the speaker play a role in the perception of the foreign language accent? Does the information about the speaker's origin also influence perception?
Question 3: What role does the linguistic background of the listener play in the perception of the foreign language accent? Is there a difference between mono- and multilingual listeners?

To answer these questions, we are planning a series of perception and event-related potentials (ERP) experiments.