Prejudice against accents is due to our lazy brains
braindecoder.com
braindecoder.com
I have this distinct memory of being picked up this one time by an Australian friend who was taking my cofounder and me to lunch after we'd been in the US for a few weeks.
As I sat in the car and we started chatting, I immediately had this sense of relaxation come over me, knowing that at least for the duration of that car trip, I'd be surrounded by only my native accent.
I'd never noticed it before, but it was a stark realisation that deciphering foreign accents is hard work and seems to put your brain into a much higher processing rate.
And as Australians, we've grown up being exposed to USA accents all the time through television etc. Yet even then it had been exhausting.
So yeah, I can empathise with the notion that deciphering foreign accents is something that takes extra effort for all of us, and whilst it may be a factor that promotes prejudice, it's not an indicator of poor character, but just one of those things that we have to accept is there and be more mindful about overcoming.
Imagine how it feels not being a native speaker of the language. It is exhausting. Specially when you are having arguments over complex subjects. I feel like I loose 20 IQ points.
It makes you waaaay less coherent.
I can dream and think in english now, so I believe I've incorporated it into my synapses in a way where it is no longer an effort to process it, as long as it is an american accent.
It fascinates me how it comes easy to my fellow native speakers to understand other accents sometimes. :)
And this, as you state, is partly is fairly large reduction in communication error rate.
This article is really a mishmash: "Molly Babel, a linguist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, replicated Rubin's study this year. More than 20 years later, Babel uncovered exactly the same bias that Rubin had. Students actually understood Chinese Canadian and Caucasian Canadian speakers equally as well when they didn't see either of their faces, Babel says. "It's only when listeners saw a picture of the Chinese Canadian speaker that their ability to accurately understand them went down."
In other words, Rubin was right in his hunch. It was the students' own biases, and not the teachers' bad communication, that led to poorer ratings of foreign professors. The students were simply not listening to their teachers."
This really undermines the discussion of the Lev-Ari study that it precedes. It's no surprise to anyone familiar with the McGurk Effect that we're predicting what people are going to say, and this can influence comprehension of different speakers. But the Babel study emphasizes that it's the stereotype that creates that perception, not merely a preference for acoustic similarity to one's own lect.
The discussion of the 2013 study on British/working-class New York accents is also a mess. The author somehow reads it as a preference against foreign accents, when in fact the subject used inference more with the New York accents. Which sounds more like a preference for high-status accents (British) over low-status (working class New York) accents.
In general, there are two effects at work. One is stereotypes: cultural bias, which led the student in Rubin and Babel's studies to just assume that they won't understand the accent of a Chinese looking professor. Another cultural effect is that high-prestige accents like the British one in Lev-Ari study, are held more reliable. The second effect is cognitive: we have a tendency to avoid actually listening and paying attention to difficult stimuli, in this case, foreign accents.
These effects are not mutually exclusive. And they also overlap. Stereotypes are partly born out of lazy brains. But they also shape how our brains interprets the world.
It's an interesting question, though, whether a working-class New York accent is less "foreign" than an upper-class British accent to a Stanford University student.
Also, another thing is confused here and you are right. For this: "...we slip in what we think a foreign speaker means to say, particularly when their accent has low social standing." The study is used to support specifically the latter part, that is, bias against accents with low social standing. Not foreignness. (An accent can be native but have low social status, it can be foreign AND low social status, or it can be foreign like the British one but have high social status.)
As a person with an accent, I am very well aware that I will be judged by it. Just like fat people are judged for being fat, or stupid people for being stupid.
Yet, I have found solace in the ideas brought forward by thinkers like Marcus Aurelius, and my mentality has changed drastically. Yes, I have an accent, and yes, that means that certain people will openly mock me. In fact, the only time I was bullied in high school was due to my accent. I try very hard, everyday, to practice my pronunciation, and I still fail.
I try hard to be understood. I try hard to be positive and to be kind and gentle towards others. Ultimately, this is what matters, and not whether I have an accent or not.
Haters are going to hate.
This is the sort of thing makes me feel sad. I don't feel bad for ESL university professors who are impossible to understand because they won't bother to pay for accent training which is entirely within their reach.
I'm glad that have a good attitude about it though.
You're missing some realization. Get a pronunciation trainer to help you. Anyone can overcome their accents - actors do it all the time. The tongue is a muscle that can learn new tricks, but you need a mirror and an expert guiding you. It should take you no time with help if you are an intelligent person.
I'm not a native speaker but I have native-level speaking skills that I acquired through practice. Having an accent while possessing an IQ above 110 is laziness.
Hogwash. We already have scientific studies showing that your native language processing blinds you to perception of certain non-native language characteristics as it optimizes on your way to adulthood.
Chinese tones, for example, are quite hard for native US English speakers to process because our language brain circuitry ignores them. The Japanese have a very difficult time perceiving the difference between "r" and "l". The process of reactivating that perception requires a lot of immersion and a lot of work.
I suspect that the people who don't speak with an accent fall into one of three categories: 1) child learners 2) those very rare individuals with exceptional neural plasticity or 3) people who have spent a VERY long time in a country.
I know people who have been in the US from foreign countries for 30 years and still have an accent. They are very hard to get rid of, and simply talking to a speaker with your native accent can reactivate it again.
In other words, requires one not to be lazy.
Fixing an accent is something that I would place under "hugely diminishing returns".
My classical guitar tremolo is quite poor. It would cost me probably 1,000 hours to fix--and at that point I'd probably be average. I have a LOT of other things in my guitar work that I would be far better spending that time on.
Similarly for a foreign language. Would I be better off fixing my horrible American accent in my Mandarin, or would I be better off learning 10,000 more words or kanji? As I am not a foreign language interpreter or teaching in China, the words and kanji have FAR more utility for me. And, to be fair, I would be even better off to learn one of the other dialects like Cantonese.
Time is finite.
If you don't have an accent, congratulations, but it's not solely because of how hard-working you are, it's also because you learned the language while you were young.
I have yet to meet a single person who speaks a second language without an accent who began their study as an adult.
An infographic I found once regarding approximate time to learn a language for English speakers.
> I have yet to meet a single person who speaks a second language without an accent who began their study as an adult.
I've met a couple, but they're indeed very rare. Although English may not have been their second language, it may have been more like 4 or 5, perhaps that made a difference.
If you put effort in it, you can overcome. I always wonder why some people who emigrate from other countries (like myself) don't bother to put more effort in integration. It's always better to blend in.
Yes, it is true that you can get rid of an accent, and that you can overcome certain limitations that arise out of the 'state of affairs of the world'. I do not deny this.
Yet, sometimes you need a lot of effort to overcome certain obstacles. Perhaps I am somewhat inefficient with my efforts, and I should try harder. Or at the very least, consider asking for a tutor. In spite of that, I hope that you understand that we do want to blend in, and just like 'fat people', we sometimes lack the tools to appropriately do so.
So, in conclusion, I do not disagree with what you say, but I'll choose to focus on the actual actions that I can take to communicate more effectively. Right now, that means finding coaches that help with pronunciation.
If someone is even able to communicate in a second language, they've likely already put in a whole lot of time and effort to get to that point. Yet there are a lot of armchair quarterbacks in the world (especially unilingual people, I suspect) who are happy to trivialize the efforts of immigrants who haven't reached fluency.
It makes little sense to assume there are just a bunch of lazy foreigners in the world there who enjoy punishing themselves. Learning a second language, as an adult, takes time. Learning to speak without any accent whatsoever, once the learner is middle-aged is probably impossible, aside from a savant here and there.
Haters gonna hate. But you don't even need them. If you speak clearly and proudly, those who need to understand, will.
I am more optimistic. Major advances of equality and discrimination prevention in many countries empirically prove that some haters will, in fact, stop hating.
"OK these gay people are not evil after all. But this other group, they are evil! I don't hate anybody, but hating evil people doesn't count!!!"
I mean, this is exactly the mechanism through which we've been able to build villages, cities, countries, and even (quite longstanding) multilateral pacts. Civilisation stands on the shoulders of atrophied fear of the other.
It's just horrid to laugh deliberately at someone for how they speak. I know of several people that have a heavy pompous Indian/British accent, but their knowledge of English is 100x my own ability. I should be laughing at myself.
at home or in places like new york, nobody has any trouble understanding me.
when i go to places with less asian people, all of a sudden people ask me to repeat myself. but only at first - never halfway through a conversation.
it's almost as if they expect me to have a heavy accent, and when i don't, they need to reset their hearing brain.
The upside of this is if your cohort is generally associated with a strong accent (e.g. grad students from China), a sure-fire way to separate yourself from the crowd would be work on diminishing your accent.
In a way, this is highly pragmatic of them. Most of them do not want to stay in the United States after they graduate, so they have no interest in the extra effort that it takes to learn an American accent. The extra time it would take actually pulls them away from their research, and is seen as a distraction. Unfortunately, those who do want to stay either don't know how to, can't, or won't practice a better American accent, and so are extremely difficult to understand, even when you are familiar with the subject matter that they are talking about.
I have met only I have a dozen or so foreign students that I did not were from another country until they told me so. It wasn't about the size of their vocabulary, but entirely based on their accent.
I am a native speaker, but I have a regional accent. When I teach classes, I consciously minimize my home accent because it is difficult for non-native speakers to understand my English if they are not familiar with its sounds. Why shouldn't an ESL speaker do the same?
When I go to other countries whose language I have studied, I try very hard to mimic the national accent, and people appreciate the effort. I think of it as a way of showing respect to them, their heritage, and their culture. If I disregard it simply because I don't have time or can't be bothered, then I am being extremely rude. And so, yes, when I have gone to Mexico, Brazil, France, and Germany, I have tried to speak those languages as authentically as possible.
where are you from?
I was absolutely floored hearing him talk. There was no hint of his Russian accent at all. I remarked to one of my friends about him losing his accent. He told me it was well known after the late 90's backlash against Russian players, many went to great lengths to lose their accents by hiring language experts to help them with their English language skills.
It would appear Sergei went above and beyond in that regard.
I'd argue that it's generally a good thing in life as a whole, not just when it comes to languages. I have an accent and a look that a lot of people can't place; the novelty of watching people ignore whatever comes out of my mouth while trying to figure "what" I am wears a bit thin over time.
It does show that many people very much judge you by what they assume your background is, rather than what you have to say. I've moved around a lot over the years and it is clear to me that multi-cultural exposure is not just a good thing, it's essential if the world intends to move forward peacefully and productively.
Laugh and live on, we judge patterns because that's what we got and how we survive. I will say, that an English accent spoken by one of my classmates might have had me with a bit of prejudice the other way. I loved her voice as it was smooth compared to my own rock-on-rock sound. Although, that was my first exposure to "being separated by a common language" as her description of fixing her car made me question my sanity ("bonnet??") rather than thinking less of her.