Do We Discriminate Against People with Accents?
Research suggests we do with both foreign and regional American accents
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In November 1959, a young comedian named Bill Dana appeared in a skit on the hugely popular Steve Allen variety show. Decked out in a Santa Claus outfit, he was interviewed in the guise of an instructor for aspiring Saint Nicks.
"I said, 'My name ... José Jiménez' and the (live) audience laughed," Dana recalled years later, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Dana spoke those four words in a comically exaggerated, thick Spanish accent. The audience roared with delight. A star was born. Or rather a character -- dim-witted, affable, with a heavy accent and speaking fractured English -- that Dana would ride to huge success.
Bill Dana
Today, it's unimaginable that such an offensively grotesque caricature could be portrayed in popular entertainment. But, while depictions are no longer acceptable in the mass media, stereotyping based on accent and even discrimination persist to this day, according to researchers.
"People's attitudes to those who speak differently tend to be negative and result in stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination in all aspects of everyday life, including education, employment and the media," wrote Yale University psychology researchers Karolina Hansen and Agata Gluszek in Language Attitudes in the Americas.
Researchers say when a person hears their native language spoken with a foreign or regional accent, it immediately signals that this person is different -- from somewhere else -- which is followed by wondering "where is she/he from?" Once we know or guess the national origin of the accent, we then attach to that person a stereotype of what people from that country or who belong to that ethnicity are like. Many of the stereotypes come from or are reinforced by movies, TV and the media.
When I spoke recently to Hansen, she told me that people have the ability to detect an accent in milliseconds, sometimes based on the first word they hear. Once we have stereotyped the person based on accent, region or national origin, we make judgments about the person's competence and warmth. It's shocking to think, if this theory is accurate, we -- you, me, all of us -- begin to pigeon-hole someone based on little more than how they speak our language. Usually, it's not favorable.
Hansen said, "People who speak with a non-standard accent -- it can be non-native or a regional dialect -- are often downgraded on competence, less so on friendliness."
In other words, we tend to infer from a non-native or non-standard accent that the person is less intelligent, less educated, less able. But we're not entirely uncharitable. We may still consider him or her to be nice. Not so smart, but friendly. A José Jiménez.
Not surprisingly, researchers say these biases can affect the accented person's job prospects -- being hired, getting promoted and getting fired.
"Accent plays a big role in terms of the way people hire (and) what kind of people they hire," said Dr. John Dovidio, a Yale psychology professor who has studied discrimination and stereotyping for 40 years.
Hansen and Gluszek, who both worked with Dr. Dovidio, wrote: "A non-standard language, dialect, or accent in general has negative consequences for the speaker concerning employment opportunities."
In the United States, a Spanish accent has historically been particularly stigmatizing.
Megan Danielle-Figueroa, a psychologist at the University of Arizona and co-host of a popular podcast about linguistics, told me, "There's this assumption of lack of competence with a Mexican-American accent, lack of education, the same kind you see with Southern (American accents), but then there's this kind of racial overtone with a Mexican-American accent."
"In the U.S., Mexican American employees speaking with a Mexican accent earn less than Mexican-American employees with an American accent, independent of language proficiency," said Hansen and Gluszek.
Naturalization ceremony, Newark, NJ, 2021. In 2020, 625,000 new American citizens were naturalized
Accent discrimination can play out in many ways. In 2020, in an article titled Color-Blind But Not Color-Deaf, Boston University law professor Jasmine Gonzales Rose recounted the story of a prospective juror at a trial in New Britain, Connecticut. Ed Figueroa -- a pseudonym -- was questioned by the trial judge.
"Despite the lack of indication that the judge, prosecutor, defense counsel or court recorder had trouble understanding Figueroa (or the reverse), the judge inquired about his English language background," Gonzalez Rose wrote. "'English is not your first language, is it?' 'No,' responded Figueroa who identified as Puerto Rican. He explained to the judge that he understood English very well. After follow-up questions about his English language background, Figueroa told the judge he understood his point: he has an accent.
"The judge, apparently embarrassed by the realization, defensively interrupted him, saying, 'No, no, I understand -- I just want to -- whenever anybody talks to me in an accent, and it's not just Spanish, I often inquire whether they can understand English well enough to be a juror. So, you're comfortable doing that and that's fine.' But, it was not fine."
After asking Figueroa more than 100 questions -- all of which he understood and answered -- the judge dismissed him on grounds of having a "significant language barrier" because "his language abilities would hinder his communication with other jurors."
"Nothing Figueroa said was wrong," Gonzales Rose wrote. "However, the way he pronounced it was wrong. He spoke with a Hispanic accent."
An appellate court later found the excusal of Figueroa was unfounded and that the judge had erred. But the appeals court said that it was not discriminatory, and denied the defense motion for a new trial.
The theory goes that humans developed a keen ability to distinguish accents in their own language many thousands of years ago as a way to determine if a stranger was a member of his or her tribe or another tribe. In those days, when people did not travel far from where they were from, it was rare to come across anyone who looked physically different. So language and accent were key determinants of whether the new person was from the in-group, and therefore a friend or ally, or from an out-group, and as such a potential threat or enemy.
Dr. Dovidio said studies have shown that children as young as 18 months detect and react to linguistic differences even before they recognize and categorize based on visual differences.
So, if we're hardwired to react that way and assign negative stereotypes based on accent, does that mean we all do it?
"I'll make a fine distinction," he replied. "Do we all do it? The answer is: we all have this tendency. It's a first step in the direction. it attunes us to different things in the conversation. It doesn't necessarily impel us to action. We can correct it."
In the U.S., the popular stereotypes associated with non-native accents vary widely, researchers say. At the top of the hierarchy are British accents (although there are many British accents, Americans tend to lump them all together) which popularly connote intelligence and class, although sometimes the English person is a sinister character (think of James Mason in North-by-Northwest). Even when they're "bad guys," they're elegant bad guys. Arabic, Eastern European and Spanish accents and those associated with Third World countries tend to be far more stigmatizing.
Regardless of the stereotype, Dr. Dovidio said, there's a tendency for the person hearing someone speaking with a heavy accent to become annoyed and blame the speaker for the difficulty, projecting onto him or her negative attributes, such as lack of intelligence.
"When I'm trying to understand a person's accent and I struggle, that's hard for me," he said. "When things are hard, it depletes what we call your cognitive resources. What we typically say is, 'I'm not the kind of person who discriminates.' But when we encounter someone with a very strong, different accent, that reduces our cognitive capacity. When we have reduced cognitive capacity, we rely on stereotypes even more."
In 1970, with his Jimenez character coming under fire for being offensive, Dana stopped playing him. He would resume it many years later.
Research also suggests a person's tolerance for an accent affects how comprehensible they think the accented speech is. If you have low tolerance for a foreign or regional accent, you're more likely to believe what you're hearing spoken as incomprehensible, even when follow-up questioning reveals that you understood everything that was said.
All of this adds up to a challenge for us native American English speakers. Our country has an estimated 45 million citizens who were born in foreign countries. That's 14% of the U.S. population and growing. If we really want to hear one another, it's going to require patience and understanding. We don't all speak with the same accent. But we all deserve to be heard.
"Accent by itself is a shallow measure of language proficiency, the language equivalent of judging people by their look," wrote Roberto Rey Agudo, a Dartmouth College professor of Spanish and Portuguese, in a 2018 New York Times op/ed article titled Everyone Has An Accent. "Instead, we should become aware of linguistic biases and learn to listen more deeply before forming judgments."
Cover photo: Naturalization ceremony for new U.S. citizens
Photo credit: Getty Images