The Accent as a Basis for Prejudice in Academia

In previous articles, we have talked about social bias in the academic community and the general belief that an academician or scientist should have a specific profile and physical characteristics to project credibility in his/her role. This motivates many members of the academic community to dress a certain way and adopt attitudes welcomed by the dominant group, to fit in, and advance in their careers. But there are aspects of your personality that cannot change (or are difficult to change), and the most important question is, should they change it at all? Attributes such as race, culture, religion, in addition to physical traits, are some traits that are projected, but there is one aspect that says a lot about us, namely, the accent with which we speak.

How do we perceive the accent?

The accent is one of the first things that any interlocutor notices in us, and it says a lot. Listening to someone’s intonation can tell us from which country or region they come from; in some cases, it may even indicate a specific community within the state or municipality. It tells us about the cultural aspects that form part of their personality, but in no way does it indicate their level of knowledge, intelligence, ability, or skills. The problem is that we frequently do think it is an indicator.

Let’s take English, for example, even though it is the same language, it is represented by different slang. Let’s imagine that we are in a conversation with three people, one of British origin, another American, and the third, an Australian. Which of these three people, hypothetically, would sound more “intelligent” or “cultured” in a conversation? According to one study done in Belgium, a select sample of people associated with the British accent with intelligence and prestige, while the American accent was more associated with simplicity and camaraderie.

“I find people are surprised at my profession simply because of the way I speak – if they hear me first, then get to know what I do for a living, they are usually taken aback.”

The critical thing to note here is that these approaches do not say much about how our interlocutors really are; it reveals instead how we perceive them. If we are not aware of this cognitive bifurcation, we will have fewer tools to avoid developing prejudices. If the language is the same (English, as in the example above), why do we assign a ranked value to the ways people pronounce it? The linguist and author, Rosina Lippi-Green, refers to this hierarchy as “the ideology of standard language.” In this context, people tend to believe that slang with the highest social prestige is the most correct and valid way to use a particular language.

This means that, upon hearing different accents in the same language, we disqualify the least prestigious ones, and we make a value judgment about the language skills, intelligence, knowledge, social class, character, and abilities of those who speak in this form of “less correct” language. This is how we fall into discriminating based on linguistics.

How does linguistic discrimination affect members of the academic community?

According to a study by James Emil Flege at the University of Alabama, it takes only 30 milliseconds to say, “Hello.” In that brief moment, the people listening are already processing information about how our accent distinguishes us, and they are forming impressions about us. Nothing recorded in that first interaction is indeed written in stone. People and their value judgments are not immovable or inflexible, and people may be open to accepting information that contradicts those first impressions. But what is undeniable is that this is an uphill path for academicians with accents that don’t match the most prestigious jargon.

“I find people are surprised at my profession simply because of the way I speak – if they hear me first, then get to know what I do for a living, they are usually taken aback,” says Peter Larcombe, professor of mathematics at the University of Derby in England. Larcombe belongs to the Midwest region of England, nicknamed “Black Country;” its history is closely linked to the Industrial Revolution.

Black Country is distinguished by its work culture and heavily industrialized economy. The natives of the region are mostly working class and have an accent different from their Birmingham neighbors. The “Yam Yam,” as those who come from Black Country are usually called, are more associated with the mining and coal industry than with academia. Larcombe describes the surprise from people when he reveals his profession as something irritating, but what he finds appalling is the discriminatory line of thought that culminates in the statement, “You don’t sound like a professor.”

There is no answer for a statement like that, except, perhaps, asking how a professor is supposed to sound. Larcombe argues that mere questioning reveals a fundamental aspect of today’s society; it is wrapped in a perception linked to the differences in socio-economic classes. When someone tells you that you do not sound like a teacher, they assume your place is in a factory and not in a university. This is the subtle racism and classism that plagues minorities in academia with social and racial fatigue due to being challenged continuously for not having the same traits of the dominant social and economic groups in the academy.

How to fight linguistic discrimination in academia?

“If I don’t sound like a professor, that’s your problem, not mine,” Larcombe says. He argues that the problem of accents is not found in those who speak them but in those who use this particular trait to make a judgment about a professor’s ability or their right to have a place within the academic community. All those who work in education understand the need to have a certain level when it comes to knowledge and use of language, regarding respect to the content, the choice of words, not the accent with which they speak it. If the words that we use reflect our level of knowledge and argumentation, why does the intonation with which we pronounce them is still a measure of these attributes? Because it shows things about us that are particular, different from our interlocutors. The cultural clash does not come from the intonation; it comes from the reaction of the interlocutor upon hearing the accent as something different and alien to the academic community.

“You don’t sound like a professor.”

The solution is not only to promote more diversity in academic workspaces. This practice has been going on for decades. Although this has resulted in some instances of inclusion and opportunities for social minorities, no real structural change has come from solely the intention of increasing diversity. A change of narrative is necessary, and this cannot be achieved without joint effort by both minorities and the dominant groups.

Language discrimination is just one slice of an enormous apparatus of inequality with social, cultural, and economic consequences. Merely educating people to be sensitive to cultural differences in the academic community as something positive will not solve social problems coming from racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of inequality. But fostering a change of narrative can help social minority groups feel welcome in academia, as well as initiating a dialogue and the necessary mechanisms that will open the path to more meaningful progress.

Sofía García-Bullé

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0