William vargas

Professor Nagales

Throughout this narrative I will use my own experiences and my knowledge about my audience to present evidences they can confirm by their own personal life experiences or common knowledge of United States society, my main purpose is to give an opinion influenced by  firsthand experience. I’m an immigrant from a Spanish speaking country and since I came to this country 3 years ago, therefore my accent is really thick and noticeable and its currently pointed out, this is why this problem is meaningful to me. This essay helped to developed analysis and research skills and also helped me to be better at locating research sources.

Accent is defined by the google dictionary as “a distinctive mode of pronunciation of a language, especially one associated with a particular nation, locality, or social class.” Where to me, the most interesting and controversial part of this definition is where its mentioned that even though we can be speaking the same language my “social class” can still be assumed and even determined in some situations by the way I speak, people will make an assumption of me and my background based on the way I say certain words, and depending on what opinion or stereotype they already have about people with the same way of pronunciation they will determined what kind of person I am and what amount of respect or value they will give me. Based on this definition and what was previously mentioned can be assume that the main problem is not the fact that people have distinctive accents and people will try to guess what country you come from the issue is that the most dominant people also created a hierarchy based on accents putting theirs at the top and diminishing all the others, labeling them as right or wrong according to which is most similar to theirs, and also according to previous stereotypes they already had about certain races. To support my claim that accent should not be a way to assume a person’s background I will use as evidence “Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts” and “ English with an accent” by Lippi-Green who is a well known writer and journalist whose opinions towards accent discriminations can help me support my claim, also I will use “English Belongs to Everybody” by Robert Mcneil who in his memoir mentions the ideology of some people that there is superior and inferior ways of speaking, also an article  called “The reason you discriminate against foreign accents starts with what they do to your brain” by Michael Erard Which will help me explain how is not right to try to say that the person with the accent is having a problem with language, I’ll also be using my own personal experience and opinion as support for my claim. Is the person with accent jus someone who is having trouble with the right pronunciation of words? Or the whole idea of having and standard way of speaking is simply an unnecessary tool empowered people use as a form of oppression?.

In the text “ English with an accent” by Lippi-Green we can see her opinion when it comes to standard English ideology and the “myth” of nonaccent, she mentions that the only reason that people think someone has an accent is because they’re comparing it to their own way of speaking, this means that accent is merely a social concept which people have been using as a way to determined a person’s education, race and socioeconomic status. The fact that accent its only plausible when comparing it to something else makes it and unnecessary way of labeling because language is a tool used to get across a message and its based on individualistic features, meaning each person have their own way of speaking, and its wrong to consider that one person’s linguistic features are better than the others which makes accent an unnecessary way of labeling and discrimination. My experience as an immigrant has helped me to understand the way people keep you on certain category based on the way you speak, as soon as a person hear you talk in their minds they’ll have certainty about your background, education level and socioeconomic status, this combined to the fact that people already have stereotypes about certain races can put you on a “wrong label” or even lead them to discriminate you because of thinking and opinions some people have towards people who speak like you do.

In another of the Lippi-Green’s writings called “Accent, standard language ideology, and discriminatory pretext in the courts” it’s mentioned the history of Ms. Mandhare  a well educated librarian who works for kindergarten kids helping them to find school sources between other duties. After sometime of working where she showed excellent skills as a librarian she was sent a letter telling her that her contract will not be renewed, this didn’t happen because she wasn’t doing her work right or because she wasn’t following the rules, this happened because of “heavy accent, speech patterns, and grammar problems” as was stated on the letter.  Ms. Mandhare was a native speaker of Marathi this could have influence on the way she speaks English, although she might have a heavy accent this doesn’t mean her skills for her job are not being good enough. This is one example of how something as simple as a different pronunciation of certain words can lead to ruining someone’s career or even life depending on the position of the person Ms. Mandhare took this case to the court where they were in favored of Ms. Mandhares situation but this action was reversed by the U.S Court of Appeals where they were in favored of the board. This shows how even the government fails to protect people against discrimination, when the discrimination is based on language this is a big problem mostly for immigrants because people coming from different countries and when their native language is other than English will have an accent and there is nothing to protect us from accent discrimination. This connects to the text of Lippi-Green “ English with an accent” which I mentioned previously where she talks about accent so be simply a myth and something that only exists because you are comparing it to other person’s way of speaking, now in this text we see the effects of this social constructed idea of  standard English or “neutral accent” where with no reason or proof of any kind its believed that a person’s way of speaking is a good way to find out one’s quality of work and value. This can helped answer the question I made in the introduction, this example perfectly demonstrate how the idea of accents and stereotype is simply a way of oppression where the dominant race in this country compare everybody’s way of speaking to their own and classify as wrong or not proper everything that is not similar to their own.

Robert Mcneil a Canadian-American novelist in his memoir Wordstruck talks about language disparity,  in “English Belongs to Everybody” he states “Language reinforces feelings of social superiority or inferiority”(pg 192) which means that depending on your education and the way you speak the language  you’ll be classified as a certain group, this groups are going be compared and the group that is made by the people who is the dominant race will reinforced their feeling of superiority claiming the way they speak is the right way and whoever who doesn’t speak this certain way its inferior. This connect to the point I made previously where I mentioned that the dominant race created some kind of language hierarchy where they put themselves at the top and consider that whoever has a different way of English is consider as inferior and when it comes to different accent is considered as a broken or incomplete way of English. He also mentions how Shakespeare also had grammar “errors” but we can see how nobody considered Shakespeare having a broken language or being part of a low or inferior group. So we can see how is not even about having or not the right way of English or what the “errors” are is more about who is making this errors and who or what group is the one speaking differently, by this I mean that all this are only excuses to keep discriminating immigrants from different countries (not all immigrants) , African American people and native Americans which have been the groups that have always being discriminated by the dominant race (white American people) this dominant race now is using language as a way to keep oppressing them by making everyone consider that the way the speak and express themselves is wrong and inferior.

In the article “The reason you discriminate against foreign accents starts with what they do to your brain” by Michael Erard its mentioned how your brain takes more time to understand a persons way to speak or accent and makes the brain work harder so the brain prefers to avoid this kind of interaction that makes the it work harder. This can explain why after so many time of working on social equality people still discriminates foreign accents it’s because the people is not used to listening certain pronunciations and its harder for them to understand what is being said and they prefer to classify it as wrong because they consider their way of speaking is the right one and since they can not comprehend the other accent they classify it as inferior or incomplete.

But not all accents are classified as wrong we often see how British and Australian accents are not only not discriminated but sometimes even consider as superior, and going back to Macneil and how grammar error on Shakespeare would have been instantly pointed out and make any other person seem uncultured and ignorant we can deduce that the main problem is not the fact that people have accents or that it is harder to understand certain ways of speak they main problem is that people’s races are still being discriminated. African American English is only seen as wrong because its being spoken by African Americans not because that specific way of speaking has something wrong by itself but because some peoples mentality about African Americans is always to consider them as inferior and because of this they make seem as whatever individualistic thing they do or have its going to be wrong too, and not only for African Americans all the nonwhite races are being diminish the same way as if skin color was to determined the quality of person or the kind of education you have or they social role you play in society.

Accent should not be a way to discriminate or even assume somebody’s background or quality of work, accent is only having different phonetical patterns when speaking certain language. Throughout this essay I successfully demonstrate the main problems and reasons why people discriminate others ways of speaking by showing how the brain reacts towards certain accents, what is the mentality of those who has been discriminating and judging other people’s way of speaking, what are the effects of people having this stereotypes and prejudices and how it can affect a persons life by misjudging someone’s way of speaking, how standard English or standard English ideology is only a way of oppression made by the race that is being dominant in the country and how race plays the biggest role in this matter by classifying certain ways  of speaking right or wrong based on what’s the skin color of those who speak it, this matter is important mostly because is the way of discrimination people notice the least and there is not many ways to take action about it all we can do is bring awareness and instead of looking for accent neutrality we should try to get a neutral mentality about peoples races and ways of speaking.

Accent, Standard Language Ideology, and Discriminatory Pretext in the Courts Author(s): Rosina Lippi-Green Source: Language in Society, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1994), pp. 163-198 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4168513 Accessed: 25-09-2019 04:52 UTC

Macneil, Robert wordstruck(Viking,1998)

Green, lippi “English with an accent”, Routledge

Erard, Michael “The Reason You Discriminate Againts foreign accents start with what they do to your brain” (2016) https://qz.com/624335/the-reason-you-discriminate-against-foreign-accents-starts-with-what-they-do-to-your-brain/