A Social Experiment...

As an individual who has spent a majority of his life beyond the confines and security of their home country, I have had the fortune of experiencing little lingual prejudice and ignorance.

However not all are share the favor of my charmed life, and this is a major concern of mine.

With all that man has accomplished over the last century, the human rights movement, fall of the Berlin wall and the dawn of the information age, one might expect stereotypes and preconceptions to be all but non-existent, remnants of a bygone era.

Sadly this is not the case and the subject of stereotypes faced by non-native English speakers acts as a prevalent theme in Amy Tan’s essay ‘Mother Tongue.’

And the hackneyed idea I would like to touch upon in particular would be accents…

For the sake of perspicuity, ‘accent’ is defined as the “distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, esp. one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class.”

In 2010, two students from the University of Chicago conducted a social experiment centered on the influence of accent on credibility.

Below, is an extract from their report that I found of particular interest:

“Most people do not know how many hours a night an ant typically sleeps, but if someone tells them that ants don't sleep, they may believe it, even if that person is not a zoologist. But people also doubt and routinely evaluate new information (Ferguson & Zayas, 2009). Such judgments of credibility could depend on how reasonable the information sounds, how credible the source appears how the person says it (e.g., Miller & Hewgill, 1964)…”

Their assessment continued to reveal the reasoning behind their postulation.

Firstly, they explained, an accent, acts as a signal, and secondly, for lack of a better term it can ‘distort’ speech, making it harder to understand. The report went on to state the reasoning behind the first statement, however the second reason, the far more critical of the two, was purely objective possessing no hard evidence.

The report went on to expound that native speakers of any language, not limited English alone, are typically very responsive to accented speech of foreign descents, and are in turn quick to draw conclusions based of those signals, casting the speaker as an outsider and foreigner. The report proceeded to expound that if left unchecked these signals produce preconceptions about the outsider that might not be necessarily true, but act as an advocate of prejudice, ultimately impacting the credibility of the speaker. Hence when a foreigner speaks, not only does their accent play a part in impacting their credibility but also the prejudice tied to it.   

I believe this evaluation provides an interesting perspective regarding the ideology and credo behind the stereotypes targeted non-native English speakers, especially those pertaining to accent.  Though these findings are among a myriad of others that agree with this conclusion, nothing is ever set in stone. Recognizing the problem and educating others about its existence is the first step towards change.

Works Cited

Garrett, Peter. "Attitudes to Language ." Garrett, Peter. Attitudes to Language .
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 124-125.

Lev-Ari, Shiri and Boaz Keysar. "Why don't we believe non-native speakers? 
The influence of accent on credibility ." 10 June 2010. 13 September 2014       <psychology.unchicago.edu/people/faculty/LevAriKeysar.pdf>.