Abstract
Two groups of native Swedes listened to short stories, related in Swedish by Greek and American immigrants in Sweden, and rated the speakers on 15 personality traits as well as on five aspects of language proficiency. American speakers were rated more favorably than Greek speakers on two traits, namely, educated and capable. On language proficiency, Greeks and Americans were rated similarly except for the “grammar” aspect on which the latter obtained higher ratings. Speakers' time of residence in Sweden was strongly underestimated by raters, more for Americans than for Greeks. Correlations between ratings of personality and ratings of language proficiency were positive and significant on both affective and competence-related traits for the Greek speakers, while there were no significant correlations for the American speakers. The results are seen as giving support to the assumption that in judging personality from spoken language, attitudinal rather than linguistic factors play a major role, particularly if the speakers' ethnic-linguistic status is high.