ABSTRACT
An African American lawyer from the United States comes to Paris for work purposes. She embraces the culture, learns French and receives positive feedback from the locals for doing so. Yet, as her language fluency improves to a near-native level, and after she has successfully immersed herself into French culture, she notices that French people treat her differently and seem to hold more negative opinions about her in their minds. She switches back to an American accent and, suddenly, things are back to normal. How could being versed in both languages and cultures lead to negative encounters? How can we understand this puzzling cross-cultural experience?
