Accent Bias
Accent bias can be defined as the unjustifiable discrimination of individuals who speak a language with an accent. The perception of accents is usual and people tend to act more favorably to people that speak like them just like they tend to be more accepting of people that look like them.
In the US and Canada where English is the main language spoken, people tend to discriminate against people that speak English differently. Generally, the European and the North American accents are viewed as superior and any body that speaks with a different accent is considered unintelligent, less educated or of a lower economic class.
The primary reason behind this bias is a self constructed social identity and high ethnocentric attitude where English speakers from North America and Europe see their own accents as superior and judge other English speakers with different accents. Individuals correlate accent with social status and by that logic, they give a person with the perceived “superior” accent more respect; such person is considered to be of a higher social class and education than a person with a perceived “inferior” accent.
English speakers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East suffer the most from accent bias. Though globalization is expected to improve multicultural sensitivity, it fails to address the discrimination people face as a result of accent bias. Linguistic variations which show up in people’s accent is an effective means of discrimination because when people reject a person’s accent they simultaneously reject the person’s identity realized through race, ethnic heritage, national origin or regional affiliation.
Accents are developed when we learn to speak, they reflect the linguistic influences an individual had growing up. A huge part of a person’s accent is influenced by the people around him, the TV shows he/ she was exposed to as a child and even how their favorite teacher spoke. Accents do not represent a person’s level of education; a person’s accent is in no way a representation of their academic qualifications or vice versa. Academic achievements are mostly achieved in adulthood and accents are formed in childhood therefore there is little or no correlation between the two factors.
A person’s accent is another unquantifiable tool of discrimination. Most English non-native speakers are usually brown and black folks who already face discrimination. The negative bias they face as a result of their accent is a by product of discrimination faced as a result of racism.
In the US and in Canada, English speakers with non-native accents suffer the most discrimination. We have fewer employment opportunities, we have lower access to health care, we receive inferior customers service, we have less housing options and lower credibility. We are judged based on how we sound before even given the opportunity to prove our worth. Listeners are not interested in trying to understand us so we are dismissed and regraded as uneducated. The bias is sometimes unintentional and sometimes people do not even know they are adversely biased to non-native speakers.
Listeners must put more effort into listening to a person that speaks with an accent. Listeners must be aware of their bias; they must be aware that they automatically categorize a person with an accent as uneducated or uninformed and they must train their brain to remove such bias. A person with an accent will pronounce words differently and the onus is on the listener to try to understand what the speaker is saying. The only difference between a person with an accent and a person without an accent is their pronunciation of words, this should therefore not be the basis of measuring their education or socio-economic status. (Chakraborty, 2017)
Legally, there is very little to guard against discrimination based on a person’s accent. There are large volumes of reports about preventing/reducing racism, colourism, sexism but none or very few on accent related discrimination. Accent bias appears less opposed than racial, religious or gender-based bias even though it is a widely known form of discrimination. Employers hardly consider accent bias as a form of discrimination to train employees about, it is hardly ever the focus. On most employment contracts, they state that they are an equal opportunity employer and all applicants or employees will be considered without attention to race, gender, national origin, disability or any other visible distinctive trait, they all however fail to mention accent.
For us with non-native accents, to fit in we try to tame our accents so that we sound more American or Canadian or European even though we are speaking a language which we have spoken from birth. It creates an inferiority complex that is hardly ever talked about. The person with a non-native accent knows he/she might be judged for their pronunciation of a certain word, they focus more on that word and less on their speech and end up fumbling on words and sentences thus affirming the perception that we are uneducated and cannot speak proper English. It is quite inconvenient and embarrassing for non-native speakers.
Flipping the sides, people with non-native English accents have no problem listening to Europeans and North Americans. They put effort into listening because they understand that the pronunciation of words may be different from what they are used to. The effort to listen to a person with a different accent should not be one sided. It is different, if the speaker is being incoherent and it isn’t possible to understand them however when they are just pronouncing words differently the listener should put in an effort to listen.
Everybody has an accent. In the age of globalization, where migration is more common than ever and with the internet, people are exposed to different people with different backgrounds and most likely different accents therefore it makes no sense to discriminate against a person because they speak different. With about 195 countries in the world we are not all expected to sound the same. People in the same country might even sound different; people have accents showing they are from the southern region and other accents showing they are from the north.
When the accent is however African sounding we are dismissed as uneducated causing unnecessary inferior complex among the speakers. People are denied employments because employers think that just because they sound different, they might not understand the work at hand.
People must stop assigning superiority to North American and European accents. We must understand that there is no superior accent. The reason those are even considered superior is because that is the accents of colonizers; they were slave raiders and told their captives that the only way to sound was like them. They brainwashed their captives into thinking there was something wrong with the way they sounded, even when the colonizers taught Africans how to speak English, they detested the accents that their precious English language was spoken in. The colonizers brainwashed the world into thinking that their accent was superior.
It is not.
In 2020, we must learn to accommodate and accept difference; we must learn to accept that there are different people in the world that sound different, look different, of different sexual orientations and all that difference is beautiful and should not be a tool for discrimination.
Kimberly Ehigiator.
References
Chakraborty, R. (2017). A Short Note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism. Texas State: Department of Communication Disorders, Texas State University, USA.
