I often mention in my classes that I’m from the north-east of England and I used to speak with a strong accent and dialect. After my family moved to a new town, my new classmates didn’t understand what I was saying. My classmates made jokes about my “funny” English; sadly, this continues now into adulthood affecting people’s lives.
I read an interesting article about accent bias on the BBC website which highlighted prejudice towards accents in England, Japan and other countries, below are some excerpts I’d like to share.
BBC article – The regional accentism that secretly affects job prospects, by Christine Ro 9th May 2022
Judgements around regional accents can impact candidates’ hireability and pay. Is there a way to end this discrimination?
Foreign-accent discrimination is rampant in professional settings. But discrimination can also extend to certain native speakers of a language, because of the judgements attached to particular accents. While many employers are becoming very sensitive to other types of bias, accent bias remains challenging to root out. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Whether they realise it or not, people infer a great deal about someone from the way they speak. People make assumptions not only about a person’s geographical origins, but potentially also their class background, from a giveaway twang or lilt, for example.
‘Standard’ accents are often linked to linguistic norms in areas where government and the media are based.
“Lazy listeners” and stereotyping
Devyani Sharma, a sociolinguist at Queen Mary University of London, explains:
“We are kind of lazy listeners, and we rely on stereotypes when we don’t have other things to go by,” says Sharma. That means it’s common to make instinctive assumptions about someone’s criminality, intelligence or attractiveness based on the way they sound.
British accent bias
“The UK has a very, very fine-tuned system of accent prestige,” says Sharma. “It’s a combination of a very monolingual past, where English developed as a symbol of the nation, and the very acute social class hierarchy historically.”
Japanese accent bias
Since the 1860s, the Japanese government has modernised the country with a focus on Tokyo, says Shigeko Kumagai, a linguist at Shizuoka University, Japan. “Thus, standard Japanese was established based on the speech of educated Tokyoites.” In contrast, the Tohoku dialect spoken in northern Japan became “the most stigmatised dialect in Japan”, says Kumagai. Its image is “rural, rustic, old, stubborn, narrow-minded, backward, poor, uneducated, etc”. Young women from Tohoku are especially made to feel ashamed of their accents.
If you want to read the full article, click the link below.
My opinion
Personally, I love accents, I think they’re living history; they demonstrate influences from other cultures and the heritage of a place. We communicate to help ourselves and the society around us, how a dialect has evolved is the personality of a place, in my opinion. Isn’t it more important to listen to what is being said rather how it sounds?
That is what Masami and I help Japanese people with; to communicate and express themselves in English. Pronunciation is important to a degree but to communicate what you want to say is more important. Your own thoughts, opinions and feelings are who you are; your legacy.
ー オンライン英語コミュニケーションプログラム ー
【あなたの心が伝わるあなただけの英語】
英語でのコミュニケーションをあなたらしい英語で。一人一人のレベル、能力、
興味に合った教材や方法を用いたテイラーメイドの英語コミュニケーションプログラムです。
”あなたの英語”でコミュニケートしたい方は、まずは無料カウンセリングをご予約ください。
