South African education specialist Daryl Braam notes that there is “widespread prejudice against African languages”. Not only that, but black South Africans have been made to feel that their own languages are ugly or inferior, because (for example) IsiZulu, IsiXhosa or SeTswana are viewed as not in the same league as the languages used in institutions such as Stellenbosch, where Afrikaans and English have been the languages of instruction. In some form this has caused linguistic insecurity – even, as it is called, “linguistic self-hatred”.
Prejudice against Latino Spanish-speakers is the real problem.
The politician should never have quoted the rapper’s lyrics to make a political point – doing so shows an excruciating level of insensitivity, says one cultural commentator
Working class Birmingham and Afro Caribbean accents sit at the bottom of an “enduring hierarchy of accents” in the UK, a study has found. A new study led by Queen Mary University of London examined current attitudes to English regional, class, and ethnic accents. According to the research, non-standard working-class and ethnic accents tend to be penalised, while middle-class “standard” speech was more highly rated and considered “prestigious”.
Discrimination against people who speak English with a nonstandard accent or nonstandard grammar is called “linguistic prejudice.” Despite sounding relatively benign, it has a severe impact on people throughout their lives, starting in kindergarten and reaching into searches for housing or employment and interactions with the justice system.
Cinematic stereotypes reflect and shape common prejudices. Perceptions can be influenced by portrayals of Asians as nerdy, black men as dangerous and Latinas as fiery. So, how does Hollywood portray various groups?
Academic Article: Pantos, Andrew J., and Andrew W. Perkins. “Measuring Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Foreign Accented Speech.” Journal of Language & Social Psychology, vol. 32, no. 1, Mar. 2013, pp. 3–20.
This study applies concepts and methods from the domain of Implicit Social Cognition to examine language attitudes toward foreign and U.S. accented speech. Implicit attitudes were measured using an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that incorporated audio cues as experimental stimuli. Explicit attitudes were measured through self-report questionnaires. Participants exhibited a pro-U.S. accent bias on the IAT measure but a pro-foreign accent bias on explicit measures. This divergence supports the conclusion that implicit and explicit attitudes are separable attitude constructs resulting from distinct mental processes and suggests that language attitudes research—which has traditionally measured only explicit attitudes—would benefit by incorporating indirect measures. The Associative-Propositional Evaluation Model is proposed as a comprehensive and consistent theory to explain the cognitive processing of language attitudes.
Exploring the Impact of Age, Race, and Stereotypes on Perceptions of Language Performance and Patronizing Speech.
Academic Article: Atkinson, Jaye L., and Robin G. Sloan. “Exploring the Impact of Age, Race, and Stereotypes on Perceptions of Language Performance and Patronizing Speech.” Journal of Language & Social Psychology, vol. 36, no. 3, June 2017, pp. 287–305.
Two experiments tested whether age and racial stereotypes influence communication. Specifically, both studies sought to understand if older African American targets would experience a communicative double jeopardy. In the first experiment, participants assessed targets’ language performance and beliefs about their own speech style (i.e., patronizing speech style). Age (participant and target) interacted with stereotype to influence ratings of language competence, and an interaction of target race, stereotype, and participant age influenced the elicitation of patronizing speech. In the second experiment, participants assessed communication competence and patronizing speech. Age groups of the targets and the participants, rather than racial groups, significantly influenced perceptions of both ratings of communication competence and the adoption of a patronizing speech style. Implications for the Age Stereotype in Interaction Model of intergenerational communication and future research on intersectionality are discussed.
Academic Article: Zheng, Yi, and Arthur Samuel. “Does Seeing an Asian Face Make Speech Sound More Accented?” Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, vol. 79, no. 6, Aug. 2017, pp. 1841–1859
Prior studies have reported that seeing an Asian face makes American English sound more accented. The current study investigates whether this effect is perceptual, or if it instead occurs at a later decision stage. We first replicated the finding that showing static Asian and Caucasian faces can shift people's reports about the accentedness of speech accompanying the pictures. When we changed the static pictures to dubbed videos, reducing the demand characteristics, the shift in reported accentedness largely disappeared. By including unambiguous items along with the original ambiguous items, we introduced a contrast bias and actually reversed the shift, with the Asian-face videos yielding lower judgments of accentedness than the Caucasian-face videos. By changing to a mixed rather than blocked design, so that the ethnicity of the videos varied from trial to trial, we eliminated the difference in accentedness rating. Finally, we tested participants' perception of accented speech using the selective adaptation paradigm. After establishing that an auditory-only accented adaptor shifted the perception of how accented test words are, we found that no such adaptation effect occurred when the adapting sounds relied on visual information (Asian vs. Caucasian videos) to influence the accentedness of an ambiguous auditory adaptor. Collectively, the results demonstrate that visual information can affect the interpretation, but not the perception, of accented speech.
Academic Article: Colic-Peisker, Val, and Jim Hlavac. “Anglo-Australian and Non-Anglophone Middle Classes: ‘Foreign Accent’ and Social Inclusion.” Australian Journal of Social Issues (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ), vol. 49, no. 3, July 2014, pp. 349–371.
Building on the concept of 'multicultural middle class', this paper explores social inclusion of professionally educated and employed non-Anglophone immigrants in Australia. We focus specifically on the perceptions and implications of 'foreign accent' in the interaction between two groups of middle-class Australians: non-Anglophone immigrants and Anglo-Australians. 'Non-Anglophone immigrants' are defined as those who arrived in Australia as adults, grew up speaking a language other than English, and therefore usually speak English with a 'foreign accent'. 'Anglo-Australians' are defined as people born in Australia who grew up in families/households where only English was spoken, therefore speaking with a 'native Australian' accent. Through a survey of a targeted sample of respondents, the two groups were asked about their intergroup communication, wider interaction (e.g., intermarriage, friendships and working together) and mutual perceptions. Our findings indicate high levels of agreement between the two groups that Anglophone/non-Anglophone communication is minimally hindered by comprehension problems due to foreign-accented speech and cultural differences. Although the positive picture that emerges may reflect specific experiences and attitudes of middle-class professionals and may not be generalisable, increased contact of the 'multicultural middle class' with its Anglo-Australian counterpart is likely to be a factor in dissociating foreign accent and negative stereotyping.