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Foreign-accented non-native speakers sometimes face negative biases compared to native speakers. Here we report an advantage in how comprehenders process the speech of non-native compared to native speakers. In a series of four experiments, we find that under-informative sentences are interpreted differently when attributed to non-native compared to native speakers. Specifically, under-informativeness is more likely to be attributed to inability (rather than unwillingness) to say more in non-native as compared to native speakers. This asymmetry has implications for learning: under-informative teachers are more likely to be given a second chance in case they are non-native speakers of the language (presumably because their prior under-informativeness is less likely to be intentional). Our results suggest strong effects of non-native speech on social-pragmatic inferences. Because these effects emerge for written stimuli, they support theories that stress the role of expectations on non-native comprehension, even in the absence of experience with foreign accents. Finally, our data bear on pragmatic theories of how speaker identity affects language comprehension and show how such theories offer an integrated framework for explaining how non-native language can lead to (sometimes unexpected) social meanings. 

People assume that objects labelled alike belong to the same category. Here we asked whether the role of labels in categorization depends on individuals’ language experience, linguistic abilities, and/or cognitive abilities. We compared monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ use of phonologically licit words (zeg), illicit words (gsz), and non-linguistic frames (in addition to a baseline condition with no additional cues) in forming novel categories. For both groups, licit words affected categorization more than frames, especially in the absence of perceptual evidence for category boundaries; illicit words also shifted categorization preferences compared to frames. Furthermore, linguistic abilities predicted reliance on both licit and illicit words, and bilingualism predicted reliance on illicit words in categorization. Thus, in both monolinguals and bilinguals, novel (and even unconventional) linguistic labels act as unique category markers but their use in categorization depends on individual language processing skills (and, in some cases, exposure to a second language).