Written Task 1

Rationale Opinion columns, act as an avenue for, ‘advocacy, denunciation, controversy and astonishment;’ offering readers an alternate perspective on affairs. As such they serve as the ideal platform to reflect on a subject as controversial as lingual bigotry. A subject close to my heart, the purpose of my response will be to educate readers on the continued existence of accentual bigotry and the widely held preconceptions concerning it. Doing so, I hope to stimulate community discussion and ultimately a solution to the matter.

As with any opinionated piece, I intend to explicitly state my viewpoint on the matter in an articulate and timely fashion.

An opinion column is reliant on the credibility of its author and source material. As such, the standpoint of my article will be that of an expert whose native tongue is not English. By adopting this guise, I immediately draw a parallel between myself, and those whom the subject would most resonate with.

I have chosen to release my article as an independent source rather than under the banner of an established publisher, as it ultimately allows circulation to a larger audience. Nonetheless to ground my work, my fancied audience shall be that of a well-educated individual concerned with the matter of lingual conventionalism. The column shall make reference to an experiment carried out by the University of Chicago titled, ‘Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility’ and an article released by the Copenhagen Business School titled, ‘The Power of Accents.’ 

An Opinion Column

A Social Experiment...

Having spent a majority of my life beyond the confines and security of my native home, I have had the fortune of experiencing little lingual prejudice and bigotry. However not all share the favor of my charmed life, and this a major concern.

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 our modern society. 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.” Accents manifestly act as the verbal presentation of one’s roots and background; but they also reflect where a person has been. Countless individuals espouse new accents after having lived abroad or moved to a different area of their country.

In her article, ‘The Power of Accents,’ author Sofie Roslind airs an interesting query. Building of the latter assumption, Roslind puts forth the postulation that accents not only act as a reflection of our heritage and experiences but also a precursor of where we want to be and the people we wish to become. Dr. McGettigan, a researcher at the department of Psychology at the University of London, further corroborates this claim by stating, “The voice is a powerful channel for the expression of our identity – it conveys information such as gender, age and place of birth, but crucially, it also expresses who we want to be.”

From my own experiences, I have come to the illation, that most people posses fixed preconceptions in regards to what differing accents might indicate. Inhabiting a society where appearance is key, people live in a constant fray to best adapt themselves in order to be adjudged in the most positive manner. One may then draw similarities between how people choose to speak and the way they might choose to take on or throw away other things in life. This precedent raises the debate whether the usage of accents and their disposal is as commonplace as one might treat habitual trends such as fashion. If so, one could argue that if there exists such a standard to judge a person’s clothes as unsuitable or unfashionable in a given context, there then exists, subconsciously, such a guideline to class one’s accent as being inferior or more suitable in a similar scenario. Despite the harshness of this supposition, one must come to terms with the stark reality we live in, even with the countless advances we have made in the fields of equity and equality.

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, accents, acts as a signal, and secondly, for lack of a better term they 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.

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. 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.   

This evaluation and the respective insights brought forth from the prior articles provide an interesting perspective regarding the credo behind the stereotypes targeting 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.