Uncovering Accent Discrimination in University Setting
Individuals from all parts of the world go to the United States in the expectation of building a better life for themselves and their children. For internationals, America exemplifies a land of opportunity, extending to each and every individual the hope of attaining the American Dream. In return, these people bring with them their cultures and languages, and they enrich the diversity of the United States. It is easy to recognize individuals that are of international through their accents.
This research focuses on accent discrimination in U.S. universities and researches if we can truly consider the existence of this discrimination, if universities doesn’t acknowledge it or are not aware to it. Including relevant studies and findings to similar questions such as accent discrimination in a workplace, while also including real personal experiences.
According to CIS, the Center for Immigration Studies, there are over 61.8 million people in the United States whose first language is not English. Each one of those 61.8 million is likely to have some kind of foreign accent in English, which presents that person’s identity, race, and where they came from. Sadly, due to many reasons and stereotypes, myriad English speakers view accent as an indication of something different from the norm, which causes accent discrimination.
Living with a foreign accent in the U.S. as a non-native English speaker is not an easy thing; especially in a work or academic environment where communication skills are important. Non-native English speakers nowadays are ashamed and insecure to speak even when their accents do not influence their comprehensibility or intelligence because of accent discrimination. The phenomenon of accent discrimination has been discussed and researched mostly in workplaces, where non-native English employers experience it from their co-workers, bosses, or interviewers. Beatrice Bich-Dao Nguyen quotes Stephen M. Cutler in her article “Accent Discrimination and the Test of Spoken English”: "To tell the minority group member that he must discard the characteristic manifestations of his national identity in order to have a truly equal and fair opportunity to compete for a job is to tell him that his identity has no place in American society" (qtd. in Nguyen 119). In other words, Culter explains the how severe the action of accent discrimination in a workplace is, as it is not accepting a person because of his or her identity or where that person came from.
A study on the experience of accent discrimination in a workplace in the Journal of Applied Psychology has shown that non-native speakers are seen as having less ‘political’ skills than native speakers. By political skills, the researcher Laura Huang means their ability to adequately impact others, explore complicated relational situations, and use language to make connections and work in a group. Huang and the other researchers in the study, believe that accent discrimination in a workplace is happening as a ‘glass-ceiling effect,’ which according to the U.S. Department of Labor is “A racial or gender difference that is not explained by other job-relevant characteristics of the employee, that is greater at higher organizational levels, and that involves an inequality of the chances of advancement to higher organizational levels” (U.S. Department of Labor, 1995). The experiment included the participants listening to recordings of job interviews, filling out a questionnaire and rating whether or not they would recommend hiring the candidate they heard on the recordings for the job. Huang and her colleagues found that non-native speakers which were identical in every respect to native speakers except for their accent, were 16% less likely to be considered for executive positions.
It is not surprising that most of the current accent discrimination research has been done in mostly workplace environments and not in college campuses; academic environments normally include students from all over the world with myriad types of accents. Therefore, it is expected that universities would be more careful and strict about discrimination in their policy. Columbia University’s policy against discrimination states that:
“Columbia University prohibits any form of discrimination against any person on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, status as a victim of domestic violence, citizenship or immigration status, creed, genetic predisposition or carrier status, unemployment status, partnership status, military status, or any other applicable legally protected status in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, employment, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other University-administered programs and functions” (“Columbia Non-Discrimination Statement and Policy”).
Even though it is understandable from the policy that Columbia is against many types of discrimination, there is not a clear policy in terms of accent. Therefore, how can people know about the existents of accent discrimination in Columbia if it does not knowledge it in their policy? However, Columbia might not acknowledge it not because accent discrimination does not exist; it might be because Columbia and perhaps other high academic institutions are unaware that it is happening.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, there are over 4 million international students studying in high academic institutions in the United States. English, is the international language and the prime language of those institutions, where native and non-native speakers use it to communicate with their fellow students or professors. Having a foreign accent in English in an American college environment can be just as intimidating as in workplaces and even increase the insecurity foreign people feel with their accent. Being a college student whose first language is not English takes a lot of courage, and dealing with accent discrimination from university faculty and students can have negative effects on non-native students and cause them to avoid expressing their opinions and thoughts in classes or in front of professors, despite the fact that the way a person speaks does not necessarily apply to that person’s level of intelligence or language skills.
During my first year at Columbia University as a non-native English speaker from Israel, I came to speak with one of my professors after not being satisfied with a grade I received on a writing assignment about the history of Latin music. The professor was an American English native speaker, who did not personally know me and based her grading on the paper only. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for my professor to realize I am not a native English speaker as she met me face to face and heard my strong Israeli accent. The first thing she said to me was: “Now that we speak I understand that English is not your first language. I will grade you differently from now on. I can’t ignore the fact that you are not a native speaker now that I know it” (A, Professor). In other words, the way my professor perceived me changed the moment after she heard my Israeli accent. It made my professor question my writing and speaking skills so significantly after only a few moments of conversation, that she thought I should be graded in a different way even though my accent had nothing to do with language skills or my paper. Being international should not interfere with the relationships students have with professors; after feeling discriminated against by my professor I made sure not to come back and speak with her again and started to avoid oral interactions with other university faculty in general. Just like my own personal experience, international students might be facing accent discrimination on campus.
According to ISSO, the International Students Service of Columbia University, Columbia has the largest number of international students of any other college or university in the United States. The percentage of international undergraduate students for the Class of 2019 is 19% of the entire college population. Moreover, according to Globes newspaper, there are over 127,000 Hebrew speakers in New York City alone, with around 3000 being college students at Columbia University (Dgoni). When people hear Hebrew, the formal language of Israel, they tend to confuse it with French or Spanish because it combines many different sounds and idioms from other languages. Consequently, Hebrew is a great example to a language that includes many kinds of accents that doesn’t necessarily sound like a ‘Hebrew accent.’ When Professor A heard my accent, she did not know where I came from, she just heard it as not native.
A research by Grace Schaffner was done in the Appalachian State University about the attitudes towards non-native English speakers in the United States. Schaffner performed an experiment which recorded 25 interviews between native and non-native English speakers; the study suggested that people who speak English as a first language are more valued by American society than non-native English speakers. This finding argues that the discrimination against non-native English speakers is due to modern racial attitudes in the united states. In one part of the experiment they asked for a student to recall an event of some kind of accent discrimination, “He recounted a story about a group of International Students at a noisy bar: “One of them that I was with was from a Spanish speaking country, and he had a very thick Spanish accent, and I think the person at the bar struggled to hear what he said. He either struggled to hear what he said or he misunderstood what he said and he just gave up or lost patience with him and went to someone else.” Thus, this can happen to any non-native English student when trying to interact with professors or other university faculty as well. When approaching to a professor in class or in his or her office hours, the professor can just as easily be less patient to non-native English students because of their accent.
During a personal interview with Gal Polani, a Hebrew Speaker and a non-native English speaker at Columbia’s School of General Studies, Polani shared with me her own memories of experiencing accent discrimination on campus: “Wanting to ask a question in class, I tried to repeat the question in my head over and over again in order to say it without an accent. After I received the permission to speak and asked the question, the professor and the entire class laughed at the way I asked the question, or more specifically, at my accent” (Polani). Polani explained that she is not the only one who experienced accent discrimination in this class, but nobody takes it seriously as Columbia does not acknowledge it as an actual discrimination.
Even though discriminations can occur from other aspects such as skin color, cultural clothes, and other behaviors are stated in Columbia’s Discrimination Policy, all of those aspects still interfere with the student’s accent. Accent discrimination in universities is happening; people and universities are just unaware of it or see it as an actual discrimination. Professors can expect students’ accent to sound as English that is not ‘standard’ unconsciously, even before hearing a student speak and base it on that student non-linguistic cues that are being acknowledged by universities. Alene Mayor refers to a similar thought regarding accent discrimination in her book “Foreign Accent: The Phenomenon of Non-native Speech”. She states that even before a person speaks, people are biased to expect a certain type of speech due to what they see even if they do it unconsciously. “If listeners expect to hear a foreign accent based on non-linguistic cues (e.g physical attributes), they will indeed ‘hear’ it, and comprehension and recall can suffer as a result” (Mayor 14). This can cause non-native students to question their own characteristics and level of comprehension in English even if they speak English well. As a result, international students will choose to avoid situations that require oral communications, resulting in “the stage of avoiding contact with native speakers” (Mayor 14). Which, is as Gal and myself did after experiencing accent discrimination. “I felt ashamed and embarrassed, and I made sure to never raise my hand again in class” (Gal Polani, Personal Interview).
Alene Mayor explains that after non-native speakers start to avoid oral speech, they are likely to find other non-native speakers who experienced the same kind of accent discrimination and create a safe group where they are able to speak in their first language and gain back their self-confidence. Unfortunately, this leaves accent discrimination in universities being unknown. Instead of telling about those discriminations in order to have the university to acknowledge it, non-native students are focusing on this small social circle of other non-native students in order to avoid more discrimination. Therefore, if no one interferes with this group of students and they don’t tell their hurtful stories to show that accent discrimination in universities is happening, the issue remains undercover and causes revers effects of more accent discrimination towards other students.
English, being an international language, belongs to those who use it and is not spoken the same way everywhere. Despite that, students are still experiencing accent discrimination in college campuses. Considering the sources presented, and as someone who experienced those discriminations on her own skin, I view that accent discrimination in universities is happening, and brings with it other negative implications on non-native English students such as hurting their self-confidence in oral speech and isolate them from communicating with native speakers, which will go with them their whole life in the United States, even after college.