Social information is cognitively linked to linguistic information, evidenced by bidirectional influences on perceptual processing of speech. Models of sociophonetic cognition theorize that the way linguistic experiences are interpreted and stored in memory is mediated by listener attention, which is guided by ideology. This relationship, however, has not yet been tested in depth, especially at the level of the individual. In this dissertation, I focus on two constructs related to linguistic ideologies--"personae" (recognizable social types) and "awareness" (conscious access to sociolinguistic variation)--exploring their role in perceptual cognitive representations of sociophonetic variation. The sociolinguistic context examined in this dissertation is Asian American and Canadian (AAC) speech, where AAC is approached as a panethnic ideological construct tied to macrosocial Asian-racialized ideologies in the minds of listeners. Representations of AACs may be further mediated by intraethnic categories at a microsocial level. Despite the sizable and growing presence of AACs in North America, linguistic variation in AAC speech is little understood, particularly from the perspective of listeners. This dissertation explores the ideological landscape of AAC speech through the lens of personae and awareness, documenting AAC-associated sociophonetic variation and its connection to cognitive representations and perceptual processing of AAC speech. To test the influence of ideology on sociophonetic cognition and enrich descriptions of AAC speech, I examine production, perception, and metalinguistic data from Californian Asian Americans across four studies. I begin with more naturalistic and exploratory approaches followed by controlled and targeted methods. First, a corpus analysis of YouTube-sourced speech establishes /["oh" diphthong]/-backing as a phonetic feature found in many AACs' production. Second, a perceptual task based on the YouTube corpus along with a metalinguistic survey indicate that /["oh" diphthong]/-backing and /[voiced dental fricative]/-stopping are ideological features of AAC speech that AAC listeners can consciously access and use to make perceptual ethnic identification decisions. Third, open-ended comments and social evaluation surveys demonstrate that AACs can be ideologically subdivided into microsocial personae representing a more culturally Asian (or ethnically-oriented) AAC type compared to a more bicultural (or mainstream-oriented) AAC type, each being tied to a cluster of visual and linguistic features. Finally, a perceptual social categorization task paired with gradient assessments of awareness reveal that hearing /[voiced dental fricative]/-stopping--a variant with higher awareness--is strongly associated with an ethnically-oriented AAC persona while hearing /["oh" diphthong]/-backing--a variant with lower awareness--is weakly associated with both ethnically- and mainstream-oriented AAC personae. The results show that accounting for personae and awareness contributes to a fuller, more realistic characterization of AAC speech and how it is processed. Moreover, they align with an interpretation where personae and awareness play a mediating role in sociophonetic representations and perceptual processing with regards to the nature of social information and the strength of sociophonetic associations. On the whole, this dissertation highlights the relevance of ideology both in the context of AAC speech and in generalized models of sociolinguistic cognition, supporting moves towards theoretical and methodological approaches that foreground ideology to understand how speech is processed in the social world. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]