In this essay, there were many features that had to be taken into account. Stuff like style, phrasing, and structure had to be thought about. But what impacted my writing in this case in particular the most has to be evidence. Mainly because we had to use a lot of sources, meaning a lot of evidence. But that doesn’t mean quantity over quality, if you slap what quotes you find first into the essay then it just becomes words in quotations. There must be a reason for it being there and that reason has to be clearly explained. That leads into my next topic of the course outcome. This course I became better at being able to Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias. Since my topic of how accents affect wages was very specific, there wasn’t a super big number of resources to work with in itself. However, I still only used about a third of the sources I could find because I had to consider what the article was saying and how it was saying it. If it had no similarities to what I was writing, there was no reason to use it. This essay helped to get a better eye for filtering out unnecessary evidence and putting only strong pieces in.
My biggest insight from this course is definitely what the essay is about. How people with accents can be affected in everyday life. It’s not something that many people pay attention to, and I think that’s what makes it so important. There’s a lot to research about how the life of people with accents differ to people that don’t have accents, and it’s not an easy task to research. There are so many aspects to everyday life, there’s varying amounts of an accent someone can have, and so on. There’s an infinite number of things to know about the topic. How often does someone with an accent get made fun of for it? How does it affect their mentality? Are people with accents trusted less? More? How does the data change in different regions of America? There’s many topics to talk about, but will likely never be done at the current state. Because no one is talking or thinking about these issues. This is why I designed this with my audience in mind being everyone. Whoever will listen to this and learn from it And actually care. This should be a topic that is known by people who don’t realize how some lives are affected. That is ultimately what this essay is about, informing people about something they had no knowledge about. With more awareness comes more incentive to not only research the topics, but to actually do something to help. This is one topic out of many that could be discussed, but it is also an important one.
Thomas Bajor
Professor Velez
October, 2021
FIQWS
How Accents affect Employment and Salary
In America, and around the world, millions of people have accents. It is nothing to be ashamed of, but unfortunately treating people with accents differently is a common problem. Accent discrimination is a less talked about issue, but that does not mean it isn’t an important one. It is an issue that cannot only affect people socially and mentally, but also financially. There are many ways and examples that accent discrimination leads to less employment, wages and income, and they are more common than people would like to think.
These examples could be intentional or unintentional, and direct or indirect; but it all has the same outcome. People with accents can have less morale and money because of accent discrimination, and there are many factors that go into it. It is first important to figure out why people with accents earn less. However, there is no clear-cut answer to this. It could be general discrimination towards hearing an unfamiliar voice, stigmatizing towards a specific country, or something different. In UChicago news, Professor Jeffrey Grogger states “While more research needs to be done, it appears that since listeners generally prefer mainstream to nonmainstream speech,” Grogger said. “This results in higher wages for mainstream-spoken workers in highly interactive sectors.” (Grogger, Morgan). These statement also brings up an interesting question; what is a ‘mainstream’ accent? BBC describes it by saying “Mainstream Dialects of English include Standard English and the Modern Nonstandard Dialects.” Basically, a generic western dialect, which could be subjective depending on where someone is from.
There are a few important details about payment and wages towards people with accents. The first thing to note is that this is not only an American issue, but a global one. This sort of discrimination happens in many countries, such as Germany. In an article by MarketWatch, Andrew Keshner says “On the whole, German workers without a distinct regional accent earned €17.62 euros an hour in 2016 while workers with an accent made €13.94 an hour” (Keshner). It’s important to observe that there is not only a difference in pay between someone with an accent from even a different region, but that there is a significant difference. A person with a regional accent in Germany makes 3.68 euros less than someone with none. That’s $4.28 less, just due to the way someone speaks.
The other important detail is that not all accents are discriminated against in equal ways. This was made evident by the article Accents in the workplace: Their effects during a job interview, by Anne-Sophie Deprez-Sims and Scott B. Morris. The article was written on a study of people with accents applying for a human resource manager position, and the accents were Colombian, French and Midwestern United States. The results that were reported were very interesting to look at, the study said “the present participants rated the Midwestern US applicant more favorably than the French applicant on the hiring scale. In contrast, the applicant with the Colombian accent was not evaluated more negatively than the US applicant” (7, Deprez-Sims, Morris). There are many factors that could have been present to get this result, but it still concludes that while some accents are treated to a higher standard. One thing that is also important to note is that while Columbian accents were treated similarly to midwestern accents, it does not mean they were treated better or even the same.
There are also indirect factors that lead to less employment amongst people with accents. One of the greatest factors is morale. When a person is treated a specific way that causes them annoyance, they are clearly going to avoid it, if the way they are treated burdens them enough, they would have no incentive to work while enduring that treatment. Kevin Abroad is an example of how certain treatment affects a person’s attitude towards the subject, he is a youtuber that speaks about his linguistic experiences and in one video describes how frustrating it is when people question his name. He says “… often people will be like, ‘oh if you’re French, why are you called Kevin?’ And I’m like, ugh really? And I know people, maybe they do, but I feel like most people don’t mean to be rude or anything but… its just tiring.” (Abroad). This could affect people with accents in everyday life, but more so in a work environment, specifically interviews. If someone is being interviewed for a job, a situation in which the person’s name is brought up multiple times, it’s not hard to imagine that comments like the one Kevin described occur often. When they do happen, it would clearly have an effect on the individual and lower their morale. This leads to multiple outcomes, such as the person not wanting to get that job or any job as much. It could also lead to the person not working as hard even if they do get the job.
It is also important to bring up that even if people with accents are employed or even are trying to obtain money, they already own, they may not be taken as seriously. Amy Tan is an author who grew up with a mother who was a Chinese immigrant and had an accent due to that. Unfortunately, people did not take her accent seriously and this would be a financial disadvantage, as she would be ignored when asking to cash out money. This would lead Amy, who did not have an accent, to having to imitate her. Keeping in mind that Amy was a kid, and from what was said did not seem to have any issues with speaking to people on the phone. This implies that stockbrokers and people in similar fields would rather deal with a child about financial decisions and request, than someone with an accent. Amy say’s “One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small portfolio and it just so happened we were going to go to New York the next week, our very first trip outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not very convincing, ‘This is Mrs. Tan.’” (Tan,9). There is a good chance that Tan’s mother wouldn’t have gotten the money if she wasn’t there to help, which raises the thought of how often this most likely happens.
Accent Discrimination is an extremely prevalent issue, and it is one that could also affect income. It is an issue that affects millions all around the world, with each place treating different accents in different ways. It is an issue that cheats hard working people out of getting as much money as others in their position and discourages people with accents because of it. It is an issue that does not have a clear explanation of why it happens, and unfortunately there is no explanation of how to fix it. There are many angles and ways to discuss the topic, such as discussing what could be done, or what even is an ‘accent’ and what is not. No matter what is said about this topic, there will always be more to say.
Abroad, Kevin, creator. Linguistic Discrimination l My Story. Youtube, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Rku8RmAf4&t=271s.
Deprez-Sims, Anne-Sophie, and Scott B. Morris. “Accents in the workplace: Their effects during a job interview.” International Journal of Psychology, vol. 45, no. 6, 2010, pp. 417-426. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/pdfdirect/10.1080/00207594.2010.499950
Keshner, Andrew. “Speaking with a strong accent could lower your salary.” MarketWatch, Dow Jones & Co, 5 february 2020, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/speaking-with-a-strong-accent-could-mean-youll-get-paid-less-2020-02-05. Accessed 5 october 2021.
Morgan, Billy. “How your speech could impact your salary.” uchicago news, University of Chicago Office of publication, 2019, https://news.uchicago.edu/story/how-your-speech-could-impact-your-salary. Accessed 5 October 2021.
Tan, Amy. Mother Tongue. The Threepenny Review, 1990.
Trudgill, Peter. “language and place.” BBC voices, BBC, 2014, https://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/feature1_2.shtml. Accessed 8 october 2021.
Throughout writing my essays, I’ve learned a lot of techniques and even sort of figured my out about my own thought process. I was able to realize that when I think of an idea of what to write, I don’t just think of one point and then another one. Instead, a bunch of ideas are strung out automatically in my head and I sort of have to organize it. A lot of the ideas I have don’t make it paper because of time limits, but time limits have also helped me focus on what’s important enough to write and stuff that could be left out. My favorite piece of writing I did was probably my phase 3 essay because it was pretty much my phase 2 essay with more ideas in it. But it was also my favorite because I became much more invested in the topic than I thought I would be. I sort of had the idea of doing the essay and getting it done in my head, but now that I have researched the topic, I genuinely want to learn more about accent discrimination. I feel like there’s a lot we don’t know about the topic, simply because the issue isn’t mainstream enough to get people’s attention. People are aware of the issue, accents are made fun of in media all the time, but no one really thinks of how people actually have to deal with those issues. This class and topic was really good for expanding my knowledge about the subject. During my writing sessions I’ve also became much more capable of writing in different styles. Before, I only was able to write formally, no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t really write any other way. But during the course of this class I was able to break out of that shell surprisingly quickly. I no longer write super elegantly if I don’t need to. I kind of just speak to myself and write down what I say, that’s what I’m doing right now at least. To be honest, I never struggled with writing too much as it is, but this class definitely gave me new perspectives and ways to experience writing. I am also more open to communicating in more languages than just English now. Before I didn’t even consider writing or speaking in another language, mainly due to the obvious idea that the reader most likely would have no idea what I said. Yet this course made me realize that sometimes it makes a point to speak in a different language, even if the reader cannot understand everything. So while it might not be comprehensible to everyone, it is still saying something whether you understand the words or not. What also became apparent to me in this class is that even if many writings have a similar concept or theme or message to them, there are many genres that it could be conveyed in. Some writings take a much more serious and formal approach while others are more humorous and non-formal. This isn’t to say that some of the serious writings aren’t non-formal and vice versa. There is really no extent to how genres and styles can be mixed with each other. A hundred essays could have the exact same story, but the way they are written is what makes them different. And a big part of figuring out a writing style is drafting and planning. That is something that was talked about in this course many times, and it was a semi-new experience for me. I never usually draft out my work, but having drafts be due instead of the actual essay at first really led to a lot room for actually planning out my writing. The non-chronological order some of the drafts were done in was something completely new, but it actually helped out a lot more than I thought. I usually have more struggles with introductions and conclusions, so isolating them and doing the body paragraphs first was super convenient to me. Despite writing an essay usually being just me typing alone in my room, there is a surprising number of social aspects to this. Mainly reviews and peer reviewing. This course was a bit of a challenge in that regard due to most class being online, but it still managed to work. Perhaps not as engaging as being in person all the time but I guess you can’t win them all. Despite being online though, peer review was nearly almost smooth and despite the awkward bits of silence when everyone is reading each other’s papers, pretty dang similar to being in person. For the most part at least. But either with others or independently, we all needed to learn how to locate resources for papers. This was always a straightforward concept to me, but this class did help me refine how I search for articles a bit. It was simple yet affective tactics such as typing in keywords or using the cuny library. But I was also able to search more efficiently for bias and credibility. Once I knew a text or resource was credible, I still had to compose of a text that integrates with supporting sources. This mainly led to a lot of trial and error and eliminating specific sources. It was a lot of time spent on each individual source, but I often looked through and compared my sources to get the best and most relevant ones. Before this course, I sort of just chose the first thing I saw and tried to make a correlation, but because of all the information on searching for sources I have now, finding the right sources for my essay became a lot easier. I also had to get more experience with some digital technologies for this class that not helped for this class but will probably help for all future classes. It was not always fun, and sometimes a bit stressful but it’s all part of the process. And its very important to learn how to use this stuff sooner than later. With that being said, it is worth it to learn all these applications to help us along the rest of the way. Because yeah maybe cuny academic commons user interface is so overly complicated, and sure blackboard doesn’t work half the time, but its part of the college experience, I guess. And is that includes glitching out and not submitting homework I worked 2 hours on only once, then I would say it’s a pretty good experience.
When this course first started, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I understood what was going to be taught but I didn’t have any expectations of how I was going to feel about any of it. However, that soon changed once more and more concepts were learned and I found myself getting very fascinated with the subjects. I was fascinated with a few topics in particular, such as rhetorical situations. Rhetorical situations are a good way to see how language experiences are affected by different environments and circumstances. Every article we read had similarities in theming, but greatly differed at times in detail and events. This is because no two encounters were the same due to different circumstances taking place. Rhetorical situations are an excellent way of seeing how different geographies, backgrounds and other factors impact the social interactions and reactions of the people in that location. In all the readings, I realized how something as simple as having an accent could affect someone. Even though I’ve had similar experiences to some of the writers, I never thought about on a larger scale how many people could be impacted by these moments of discrimination to say the most, harmful jokes to say the least. This is without a doubt the most important insight I’ve gained. Through these articles I was also able to recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering, oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users, and be open to communicating across different languages and cultures. To be honest, most people don’t even know I’m polish, I’ve mentioned it more times in this one class than I have in my entire life. I’ve never truly felt the need to express it, naturally the topic of my nationality came up a lot more when I was younger, but I never thought about it after that. These articles made it evident that people of different cultures could be oppressed, but also empowered. It is a matter of mindset to choose how these experiences impact someone. Discrimination could bring a person down and shame them, or a person could grow more pride and stronger from it. Oppression and hierarchies in language is not talked about often in everyday context but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. However, if people are open to expressing and discussing these situations as they are done in the articles, these issues could be addressed more effectively. With all this, it is very important to have an audience, someone that will receive the message you are trying to convey. When it comes to this paper, I could obviously say the audience is the professor and my classmates, but that’s not entirely true. While they are audience members, if this were to be a public paper, I would want anyone who is interested to be in the audience. Perhaps that means people with similar experiences to me, or maybe that is someone just fascinated the topic. I feel like isolating anyone would ruin the purpose of a paper like this one. I feel that including everyone despite experiences is a good way to share a topic you believe in. With all that being said, this event happened a long time ago; but it is still one of my most important experiences with language and literacy.
WLLN
My parents both worked when I was a child, and many times they would be too busy to take care of me as well. I was often babysat by my grandparents because of this. The only issue is that they spoke only polish and at the time, very broken English. I was not even old enough to be in school yet, so I happened to be learning polish and English at the same time, but much more so polish. My uncle would teach me about an hour everyday of new polish and English words, with about 45 minutes on polish words and the remaining 15 on English. This would not necessarily be a problem, if I lived in Poland. Unfortunately, I was about to go to an English-speaking kindergarten. When my mom would pick me up from my grandparents’ house, she would try to teach me English, but I would find it much more difficult to learn. I was so used to learning polish so that is I got comfortable speaking, and in a way, it is what I preferred to speak. My mother obviously wasn’t happy about this, and she made it known. She would visibly be stressed whenever the subject was brought up, which was quite often considering Kindergarten started soon. Being as young as I was, I didn’t have a large understanding of the situation. I knew that I was less fluent in the language my parents wanted me to know, but I was not exactly sure what the situation was. I did not know that my school life would be more difficult because of what I spoke, I never even thought of it. However, as my mother’s constant attempts to fix my speaking progressed, I figured something was wrong.
There are a few things that are important to know about my kindergarten, the first is that the way it worked was not like that of a traditional Kindergarten. This is because it started one or two or even a few years early depending on when the parents would want to send them. This meant that many of the kids were still getting the hang of speaking words, and many were for the most part illiterate. That’s not to say they couldn’t read, but their reading vocabulary and vocabulary in general was limited. Therefore, I was still in the process of learning two languages instead of knowing a solid amount of one. What added to this was the fact that my parents were always working, so instead of driving half an hour to my grandmother’s house, they sent me to kindergarten early. When my mom signed me up for kindergarten, she was aware I spoke less English than most American kids my age, but she was confident. Unfortunately, she would find out teaching a kid how to speak and read English when that kid is fluent in another language; is not easy.
I’m a very visual learner, but I didn’t know that yet. Neither did my mother. Her method of teaching was simple but effective, to some people, not me. Since I knew a good amount of polish at that point, it seemed pretty simple; take polish words and translate them into English. However, the way she got the polish words were by asking my grandmother. Not by having my grandmother write them down, but by saying them and my mother writing them down. I think this goes for all languages but writing down a language you have no experience with by hearing it only, is sure to lead to a few typos. Especially when that language consists of Z’s, D’s, Y’s and occasionally a few vowels. I would say my mother’s attempts to help me get better at English were unsuccessful, but that would be a bit of an understatement. The concept of showing me a misspelled polish word on a card, then flipping it over to show the English word made for more confusion on my part than actually clearing anything up. Aw no! My mom had visible fear as she heard my answers and started to flip through the cards more and more frantically, and I continued to not be able to pronounce a single word. I remember the cards flipping, ‘shoe’ I said ‘shut’ (but pronounced it shoot), ‘dolphin’ I said ‘delfen’, and so on. My mom’s clear concern also put a bit of pressure on me to get it right. Unfortunately, the pressure ended up making me get even more things incorrect, even the simplest words. I remember my mother showing me a card that said ‘bee’. I could do it this time, I knew I could. I looked at the card and studied it, I took all the time I needed and then said with all the confidence I had, ‘dolphin’. It seemed hopeless, but it didn’t make much difference. My first day of school was in three days, my mother continued to practice with me for those three days, and then hoped for the best.
My elementary school
On the first day of class, everyone was in a circle with the teacher. The teacher introduced herself first, naturally, and then she said everyone would go in a circle and say their name and favorite food. I didn’t remember any of the names or favorite foods, because I had no idea what any of my peers were saying, much less so because they were speaking English, but because I was absolutely petrified. I barely made out what my own teacher said, I was completely clueless about how to respond. Going through the circle, I can’t remember hearing anything but muffles. It can be argued that this is because it was such a long time ago, but for specific events, I have an amazing memory no matter how long ago it happened. This was one of those events. Once it was my turn, I looked up at the ceiling and didn’t say anything. After a few seconds I looked down at the ground, I was too embarrassed to look at anyone. I was capable of answering the question, but not well enough to answer in front of kids I was going to be in the same class as. After speaking to me, or at least as much as she could, my teacher began to understand the situation I was in. The students, being in kindergarten, did not. I don’t remember a lot about kindergarten, but I do remember events like this one, as well as remembering how mean kids could be. I was too scared to speak to a lot of kids, and when I did, they would ask things like ‘why do you sound weird’. While kids don’t have the most elaborate insults, there’s something about how unfiltered they are that doesn’t make me feel right even looking back at them now. However, it was good motivation to improve my English. Motivation was exactly what I needed, and with determination to try harder; learning became easier.
My mom had a few books that she got to teach me. They were books that were designed to learn English, and mainly just consisted of showing a picture of something with the word for it under the picture. It was simple but effective enough. In school, my teacher went out of her way to help me, including getting me a children’s dictionary. When I was in school, I carried it around like a bible. I would constantly look at it and use it to plan what I was going to say, it without a doubt changed my life and had a huge impact on how I learned. I collected all the books I had and used them as best I could. I was now more determined than ever and it showed. I would study more and more every night. Book after book, I would go back and forth and read as much as I could. Because of reading all these books and working as hard as I could to learn English, I was soon speaking it almost as well as everyone else. The time I spent during these moments made me realize a larger picture of the whole situation. If you are from a different country, you have no choice but to instantly assimilate. If you don’t, you can’t even make it through kindergarten. Thankfully this was not the case for me, and by the Time Kindergarten was over, I was semi fluent in English, which I don’t think would have been possible without the literacy I was given.
Writing this essay felt a lot more different to me than writing the others. I grew a genuine sense of caring for the subject in a way I thought I never would. The evidence is definitely what impacted me the most in this essay. It was one thing to talk about accent discrimination, but once you look at how much evidence there is to prove its very present existence, you sort of have to wonder how no one pays attention to it. It’s in everyday life and people just ignore it because they don’t know about it. Which is why I like writing essays like this that could actually raise more awareness about the issue. Finding all this evidence was also surprisingly easy for me which is why this phase mostly helped me to Locate research sources. The different discussions and lessons we had to show how to find evidence helped a lot and because I used key words, I was able to research the topic quickly and easily. A meaningful insight I’ve gained regarding language and literacy is the structure of introductions and conclusions as well as a thesis. In my last essay, I felt like my introduction was really basic, while the one in this essay isn’t spectacular, it feels much more solid in my opinion. The conclusion also has more purpose in this essay, mainly because made sure to restate the main ideas that were mentioned. I liked my thesis a bit more this time too because there was a lot more flexibility with what my topics could be focused on. I would have liked to go a bit deeper into the topic if the page limit was a bit longer, but I am satisfied with the amount I was able to say in this essay. My essay in the last phase was a bit more difficult to find research on because of how specific it was, so this thesis felt like a good in between. With all this being said there was one question I was stuck on, that being who my audience is.. I could say the professor and students, but that’s obvious. The question is not who will be reading it, but who it was meant for. While it is meant for the professor and students, I feel like there’s other people it’s meant for too. To be completely honest I always struggle a bit to answer this question and without a doubt overthink it. If it was meant for people with accents that relate to the topics, that would ruin the point. The point being to bring awareness to the issue. I know this isn’t going to be some published paper in the new york times, but for some reason I always answer this question as if it were. I could say its for people without accents, but then it would be excluding the group the essay is about. So I guess the right answer is the essay is for everyone. I’m hesitant to say that because its the answer I always give, but here especially it seems like the right one.
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Thomas Bajor
Professor Velez
FIQWS 10103
November 2021
Mental impacts of accent discrimination and how it happens
Millions of people Living in America and other countries have accents. Each one tells a story about where a person is from, and where they are now, its is something that is developed like a piece of character, yet it has still caused people to be treated lesser than others without accents. There are many ways accents can be discriminated against, and some are harsher than others, but no matter the case, Accent discrimination has a negative mental and social impact on people with accents. Whether it be intentional or unintentional, accents are often discriminated against in everyday life. However there are also ways to spot it and avoid it.
Before going into how accent discrimination makes someone feel and why it makes them feel like that, it is important to know a few concepts of accents discrimination. One of them is Ethnocentrism. Simply put, Ethnocentrism is taking one culture or ethnicity, and comparing it to every other. Even more simply, it is the idea of a potential subconscious superiority complex based on culture. Examples of this are found all around, one example is shown in an article from LinkedIn that states “The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission have recently uncovered a great deal of evidence that recruiters favored people with certain accents over others, regardless of their academic merit. One the one hand, many immigrants to the UK have reported experiencing negative treatment that they can attribute to their foreign accents”(Russell). When accents matter more than qualifications, there is clearly an issue that is not being addressed nearly as seriously as it should be. This example shows that the idea exists, but it may only happens a few times. However this concept becomes a lot more real and concrete when significant evidence such as a scholarly article is created. The scholarly article ‘A Short Note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism’ states:
In the USA, students with standard American English (SAE) perceived speakers with foreign accents to be inferior speakers, though the speakers had high scores on objective measures of comprehensibility and speech intelligibility; students in the USA preferred courses taught by teachers who use standard American accent (Chakraborty 3).
Seeing someone as inferior because of how they speak, and preferring listening to a more familiar voice based on how that own person speaks, is a great example of ethnocentrism. While this might happen without people meaning to cause harm, it still occurs and that is the issue. Favoritism is a concept that many are familiar with, simply being clear about having a favorite of something. However, ethnocentrism breeds a dangerous kind of favoritism, a kind that could turn into blatant discrimination and racism.
The way people act towards others will always make people feel something in response. Whether it be excitement, joy, sorrow, confusion or anything else, things people say always provoke an emotion. However, it would seem that an overwhelming majority of the time when commenting or more specifically questioning someone’s accent, the results are negative. This would mean saying things like ‘can you say that again, your accent is hard to understand’ and ‘why do you speak like that?’. For many people, an accent is part of their identity, and part of who they are. Many people are proud of it, but constant comments about an accent that might degrade it in any way leave a toll on those who have accents. Being talked down to is something that many immigrants and people with accents feel, and it could be very harmful mentally. Out of the countless people that experience accent discrimination, one example comes from an opinion piece by Aakanksha Sinha from the Aragon Outlook. Sinha recalls how her classmate’s made fun of her pronunciation of the letter H, being ‘Hetch’ instead of ‘aytch’. Something so miniscule shouldn’t be an issue, but it was made fun of anyway, and it clearly left a mark. The article reads “I started to feel insecure and excluded based on my Indian identity. I tried hard to change how I spoke, so I wasn’t mocked. I felt as if being born in America was significantly better than being born somewhere else, as if being an immigrant was somehow wrong” (Sinha). This is a feeling that thousands if not millions of people could relate to. Being seen as less than because of where someone came from is something that goes on in everyday life and nothing is said about it. There is a clear bias, and whether it be from internal bias or intention, it results in seriously negative mental affects such as major insecurity, trying to change how one speaks, and questioning identity. Accent Discrimination also affects people at a young age. One article states “One study found that adolescents exposed to discrimination and who have high levels of depressive symptoms use an avoidance coping response more frequently. Other studies demonstrate that minority youth exposed to discrimination were more likely to engage in nonphysical aggression, aggressive or retaliatory behavior, and drug use” (Vines, Ward, Cordoba, Black). Accent discrimination may be a problem with adults, but that does not mean children do not face the same issues. And these issues could negatively impact kids just as badly, as well as affect mental development. There are many impacts on something as simple as words, and it is important to know not only how it affects a person, but why.
It is clear that a harsh negative effect occurs on people with accents when being discriminated against. But why does discrimination happen so often? One factor is how people with accents are perceived to the brain of someone that does not have an accent. A study done at UC Berkely was done to compare the neurological reaction to accents. One study included IAT, or implicit association test. Implicit association test could be used to find internal bias, which is why it was used to find bias against accents in this study and was conducted by having people listen to East Asian accents. This was said as a result:
This study revealed that native American English listeners who had greater implicit bias with Asian to foreign and Caucasian to American associations experienced more hardships in comprehending English sentences that were spoken by native Korean speakers compared to native English speakers. The study on cognitive processes shows that having a foreign accent negatively influences credibility and reliability as a person regardless of social status (Sethi, Rho, Vasquez, Worley 7).
This study concludes that there is a bias towards people with accents, which the study theorizes is due to comprehension. It is possible that because any accent is less understandable to someone with no accent specifically because it is not what they are used to hearing, they trust the accent less. Perhaps clarity and comprehension, or perhaps just even a different way of speaking is enough to subconsciously make someone feel less associated with the person, thus creating a bias towards them. Keep in mind that this is not factual, but at the same time very likely. Another important note is that this study and result is not associated with everyone. There are, unfortunately, people who hear specific accents and think less of a person because of it out of choice, this study is more for the majority of people that internally discriminate against accents without intending to. This is well explained in a BBC article, explaining “Not every type of linguistic discrimination is intentional; many people who think they’re being inclusive don’t understand that their inherent biases are pushing them to make judgements they don’t even know they’re making.” (Ro) While not intended, not knowing the damage being caused makes the issue worse than everyone being aware.
There are so many ways that accent discrimination affects people, but what should be done about it? Before anything could be done, people must first know about the issue. This is why I believe it is important to have awareness of events regarding accent and linguistic discrimination. Policies to be careful about how you treat people with accents should be taught in workplaces as well. BBC describes this well in an article that says “First, organizations need to be strategic about having ongoing conversations about linguistic diversity as a type of diversity, educating staff about how language-related biases affect communications and opportunities and incorporating this into policies” (Ro). It is important to be sincere yet strategic about how to solve the issue, it is important to teach people about the issue before they are told to combat it because if people don’t know about what they are trying to fix, they won’t care enough to fix it. Once people know about the issue, it is important to teach them to keep in mind what they say and how it could affect people. It is a very small ask, but it can make a significant difference. This is an issue that has been avoided for a very long time, and it is time to finally change that.
This cartoon is simple yet sums up accent discrimination well. Even with the silly and cartoonish style, there is a very real subject matter being talked about. It is an issue that not only is started on a psychological level, psychologically affects people with accents. It may be intentional or may not be, but accent discrimination is seen in many forms such as ethnocentrism, However, there are ways to help stop it. These ways are simple, yet both improve awareness to the issue and help those who have been affected.
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