Sociolinguistic Artifacts

Ashton Kutcher talks about speaking Russian with his partner's parents: "Russian's a very aggressive language... it doesn't matter what you say, it sounds like you're yelling." It reminds me of this study: Lindemann, S. (2005). Who speaks "broken English"? US undergraduates' perceptions of non-native English. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15(2), 187–212. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2005.00087.x Undergraduates were asked to label maps with characteristics of the English spoken by people from each area. Eastern European countries were rated very low for "pleasant" and "friendly," The authors address the idea that judgments language serve as proxy for judgments of people, and they suggested that political ideologies likely influence the results they found. While this study is about American undergraduates' perceptions of English (based on observation/experience or entirely imagined) spoken around the world, similar judgments exist about other languages. Why is French considered romantic, whereas German and Russian are thought to be harsh or guttural, even by people with little to no experience with the language they're judging?