A Short note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism

Abstract

This paper discusses the interrelations among accent-based biases, social identity and ethnocentrism. Construction of social identity creates a set of ethnocentric values within a person, which indirectly or directly plays a pivotal role in generating accent related biases. Starting with Tajfel’s (1959) social identity theory and then the discussion of ethnocentrism, accent related biases have a long documented origin, development and consequences. People construct their social identity based on numerous variables and then their in-group and out-group memberships are established. Ethnocentrism, as a variable, influences listeners’ accent perception and subsequent judgment regarding their perceived accent. The degree of ethnocentrism is related to speakers’ potential accent biases. As legal safeguard against accent related biases is absent, active resistance and awareness-initiation are expected from speech language pathologists and the concerned community in general. Role of training institutions is discussed.

Why are Certain Accents Judged the Way they are? Decoding Qualitative Patterns of Accent Bias

“…Findings from the present paper can contribute to such discussions by bringing useful awareness to SLPs about the nature of bias, the psychosocial environment and judgments that their diverse clients face due to their accents, and perhaps even become aware of their own biases (e.g., Perry, Murphy, & Dovidio, 2015). Indeed, as asserted by Chakraborty (2017), "the field of Speech Language Pathology has offered a cursory attention to the issue of accent related biases"…and that "it is critical to engage in formal discussion on accent discrimination". Furthermore, speaking with an accent can often be confused or confounded with being limited in speaking proficiency of English.…”

“…Depending on their own language and regional background, listeners have been found infer speakers' traits based on their preconceived judgments and opinions of those accents, for example judging the speakers on attributes of intelligence, competence, attractiveness, trustworthiness and so on (see comprehensive review in Giles & Coupland, 1991); The impact of these listener biases and judgments are significant and pervasive to speakers' vocational, social, economic, academic, emotional status. For example, individuals experience discrimination in obtaining housing, employment, or other basic needs; experience poor job performance evaluations and competence, poor customer service experience, patient safety and patient experience concerns with difficulty understanding the accents and communication of their physicans and other care providers, linguistic profiling and judgments of criminality in law based on accents, difficulty learning as students in classes with instructors with strong accents, to 2013) or train them to manage these biases as part of the service provision (Shah, 2012b;Chakraborty, R., 2017). The inherent subjectivity in accent bias makes it difficult to interpret in a reliable manner, especially given the degree of bias varying across the personal bias of the listener, their experiences, and the context.…”

Discrimination and avoidance due to disability in Australia: evidence from a National Cross Sectional Survey

“…In-group versus out-group comparison frequently creates tension, conflict or discrimination. Based on an individual’s perceived commonality with other group members, one might have several group-memberships [ 28 ]. As the likelihood of gaining one or more disabilities increases as people age, more older people will self-identify within this group, thus mitigating any prejudice or discrimination.…”

Academic and Social Support Services for International Students

“…As stated on the university website, "the goal is to make accent speech easier to understand by improving sound production, intonation, stress, and rate of speech" (UT-Dallas, n.d.-a). Speech therapy for accent modification improvement in a target language has been considered an acceptable practice among language acquisition specialists and does not necessarily imply that accents are negatively perceived and should be reduced or eliminated (Chakraborty, 2017). In some cases, speech therapy has been included as part of a language acquisition process in language academies for accent modification (Brady, Duewer, & King, 2016).…”