Description:

This Inquiry Essay was about a topic as it relates to Bridges to Success/the US Experience/the NYC Experience, and knowing your specific audience, keeping in mind the Rhetorical Situation. The rhetorical Situation is about learning goals to strengthen our college-level writing. During this project, we practiced putting varying perspectives from sources together in an essay, summarizing each source’s context and argument, and showing how these sources could support one another or could go against them but also help strengthen your argument. As well we were introduced to formatting and learning how to apply MLA in our essay to make it more professional and college level.

It’s More Than an Accent: How “Standard” English Shapes Our Judgments

Cindy Nivicela  

Professor Jessica Duffy 

FIQWS 101 

November 13,2025 

               It’s More Than an Accent: How “Standard” English Shapes Our Judgments 

         Throughout time there has been debate about this question. Although millions of people speak English, not all English speakers are heard equally. There are people that consider the “standard” English as more superior to other English since it more professional to speaking, and writing. So, the person’s accent determines how intelligent or professional they are considered. Since the accents could change someone’s perspective about them. Standard English is viewed as the “correct” way to speak and it’s often used in formal writing. This causes the English with accents such as Black English, Jamaican English, Canadian English, etc. To be seen as a less of a high status than the Standard English. Even though recently diversity has grown in the United States and other several countries, when it comes to English diversity doesn’t seems to apply on that subject. This causes a huge amount of bias towards people which could affect people’s opportunities towards job and education, as well as affecting people’s personal lives. Which makes us wonder on “How does Standard English affect people’s perspective of other English accents? Does the accent affect people’s process of education, work, or social life?” This essay argues since Standard English is seen as “superior” it leads to discrimination and unfairness in many various ways in someone’s life. Throughout this essay, it will demonstrate how “Standard” English could affect individuals’ education, work, and personal life.  

         Many people think or see English accent sound smarter than other which causes misjudgment towards others.  An example of accent bias could be seen in a Ted Talk video on YouTube “Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent” by Safwat Saleem. This Ted Talk video is about Safwat Saleem personal life and his struggle with his accent. It mainly focuses on how his accent wasn’t considered a “normal” accent, which caused him to be out of place throughout his childhood. This statement caused a huge struggle through Safwat life, and this caused him to be silenced since his accent was a joke to other. But throughout the video he decided to stand up and to speak for himself and others in the same situation. He started to teach others that every accent should be considered “normal” since it is still in the same language. “When you speak with an accent, people think you’re stupid” (Safwat Saleem. “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 15 Aug 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4a0NvLTebw). This contributes to my question since he also talks about how others saw him and made fun of him since he had an accent. Which contributes to a part of my question since I want my audience to feel and vision these people experience when it comes to their accents and how it could contribute to someone’s life in many various ways. It also demonstrated that it affected his personal life since it affected his confidence, which made it difficult in his education process and saw him as less intelligent. Despite every person criticizing him, he comes to conclude “It took me years to realize that there was nothing wrong with my voice. It was the way people listened to it” (Safwat Saleem. “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 15 Aug 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4a0NvLTebw). This was caused by people idea of “Standard” English is the only “right” way to speak. Although accent bias influences negatively towards people socially, it also plays a major role in professional settings.  

         Accent bias is extremely strong in the workplace since people’s promotion or employment is dependent on your accent. It has often been influenced by how someone sounds which could cause some opportunity to be shattered in moving up in status. Similarly, the article “Accent Bias and Perceptions of Professional Competence in England” by Erez Levon, Devyani Sharma, Dominic J. L. Watt, Amanda Cardoso, and Yang Ye. Explain and conduct an experiment towards accent bias in a professional setting. This article is about how there has been an experiment and individuals for a working job interview. But the people that the article is interviewing have different kinds of accent, so this article wants to demonstrate that there are still accents bias throughout the work field and how it continues to affect people’s perspective. There method was to examine the listener’s and their response toward five English accents in an employment and professional setting. The accents were chosen based on religion, ethnicity, age, and class so they could be different from each other. While doing this experiment, they recorded a group of young men that were speaking in their native accent to determine if there and stereotype. The resulting of the experiment “However, we also find that accent attitudes are more nuanced than has been previously reported and that the hierarchy of accent prestige is constrained by a number of social, contextual, and psychological factors” (Levon et al. pg. 375). This determines how different levels of harshness are towards a person’s accent. They noticed that in the younger group they weren’t hashed as the older group when it came to a professional setting of employment. People were accepted depending on their age, background, and experience. As well as someone’s perspective alone contributes their opinion toward accents’ bias since some people see working class as friendly, but others see them as uneducated. Which could play a role in how someone reacts towards people’s accents. Overall, Safwat Ted Talk of his personal life and the “Accent Bias and Perceptions of Professional Competence in England” research article demonstrates how accents bias creates a barrier to people’s social life. It shows the importance of accepting every English accents as an equal since accent bias give a less education or working opportunity to the individual. Also, accent bias isn’t just limited to one singular country or state. It has also been seen in various places and has been researched and there have been similar patterns. Accents discrimination extends beyond English speaking influence people that are non-native accent are treated similar internationally. This idea is further supported by “Non-native accents and their impact on hiring success” by Céline Thomas. This article is about how different types of English accents affect hiring outcomes. This is about how German and Spanish accent affect their hiring position but among the Dutch speakers. But as well has an English speaker being interview by the same Dutch speaker. Throughout the experiment, the ending result were that the German and Spanish accent had a lower hiring position than the English accent candidates. This contributes to my question since this helped me understand that it was just a different type of English accent was being tested on but as well, they had a “Standard” English accent being interviewed and it helped give an overall understand about how an accent could be affective. This article highlights how accent bias isn’t only contributed toward a singular country, but there are other countries that as well are in the same situation. In the article it sates “German and Spanish speakers were … evaluated worse than American speakers … factors such as perceived status, solidarity, or dynamism affect the hire ability of a candidate” (Céline Thomas, page 19). This shows how accents affect employment outcomes even if their hiring decisions aren’t as different. But after the experiment it as well states “Out of all three speakers, German and Spanish speakers were understood least, confirming H5. … German and Spanish speakers were rated as equally comprehensible even though participants were more familiar with the German accent” (Céline Thomas, page 18-19). This quote shows although the listeners were familiar towards the German accents, they still consider German and Spanish speaker as less understandable since people were influenced by other judgment and how it isn’t simply just unfamiliar or exposure towards the accents. Since the experiment was proven otherwise. This supports the idea how Standard English sets a barrier which affects opportunities and social interactions for speakers that has a different English accent. This study and experiment demonstrate that accent bias isn’t just in one location but in various places which causes a worldwide issue affecting education, work, and social life. From classroom to workshops to a whole different country. There seems to still be a problem with accent bias. Which continues to contribute and affect a person perceptive to others. If people saw every accent as equal, people wouldn’t be judged by how they speak or pronounce a word differently.  

        However, research by Zenghu Cheng, Yugui She , Junjun Fu 3 and Wenming Xu shows that accent bias is less likely to hire someone with an accent when they did not know them, but this bias disappeared when the speaker and listener were familiar with each other. So, getting to know someone can help reduce some of the disadvantages of having a different accent. This suggests that interaction and familiarity between different speakers can help lower accent bias. This article is about how accents have no effect on people’s job opportunities of getting into one but the familiarity between the speaker and listener. So, throughout the article there were 2 different studies. The first study was about two students that had different accents, one had a Henan accent, and the other one had a Mandarin accent, and there were 4 people in a room and two were speakers and the other two were listeners and their role switch. Throughout the experiment, the researcher concluded “These findings indicate that the accents did not affect participants’ understanding of what the candidates said. Thus, any difference in recruitment decisions across the conditions were not due to a difference in level of understanding.” (Cheng et al. pg. 4). This quote demonstrated that even thought there were different accents the result wasn’t different as when people spoke Standard English and the compression remain the same throughout the first study. While the other experiment was the same, it was more of a one-to-one interaction which followed an activity such as a game. During that second experiment the result were suggesting “may influence recruitment decisions; participants were more likely to recruit those who spoke with a mainstream Mandarin accent than those who spoke with a Henan accent, but this effect existed only when the candidates were strangers to the interviewer; when the candidates were acquaintances, this effect was absent.” (Cheng et al. pg. 5). This result states that when it comes to familiarity with someone, the accents seem to disappear. So, in other words is that when it comes to professional interviewing or cooperation, it doesn’t influence when both parties have social connections. So, accent bias seems to happen only to strangers, when someone doesn’t know another person. The result was that the Mandrin accent had more advantages than the Henan accent but when the speaker had an acquaintance there were no differences. This contributes to my essay since I want both the perspective of people disagreeing and agreeing about accent and their effect on someone’s perspective.  

             While the “Familiarity Determines Whether Accent Affects Attitudes and Behaviors of the Listener” states familiarity as a solution towards accent bias, the” Social and educational challenges of international students caused by accented English in the Australian context: A sociolinguistic analysis of linguistic experience” disagree with their statement. This article is about international students who have trouble with their education and social life due to their accents or the English accents. As well this article demonstrates how this factor could affect on their work toward their education and how it could cause the students to lose their confidence. This article contributes to my education part of the question, since my question asked about how it could affect the process of their education. So, this article demonstrates that an accent could affect someone’s attention and their education. As well this article doesn’t just focus on the student’s grade but also their social life, which is a part of education. As the passage states, “Notably, accent stereotyping and negative perceptions against accentedness were clearly experienced by this student community.” (Park Eunjae, pg. 4). This quote goes against the article “Familiarity Determines Whether Accent Affects Attitudes and Behaviors of the Listener” since the stated that accent bias just occurs to strangers since there is no formality. This quote states the opposite since these university students are in the long term and have built formality, but there is still bias continuing socially. As the article concludes that “International students have to deal with difficulties caused by accented English at two different levels: 1) their own foreign accent or that of their conversation partner, which can result in loss of confidence in their linguistic skills: and 2) negative societal attitudes towards foreign accents.” (Park Eunjae, pg. 4). This statement disagrees with the statement that “Familiarity Determines Whether Accent Affects Attitudes and Behaviors of the Listener” has stated of the people that were familiar were most likely protected from the accent bias. But this quote states that it isn’t just simply a stranger based issue but also people that have familiarity, and it affects people over time like these university students have experimented with.  Ultimately, the accents bias could affect people long term when it comes to confidence, social life, and relationship towards one and another.  

             In conclusion, accent bias continues to influence people’s education, social life, and professional life. Although their article that goes against this argument by stating it based on someone “familiarity” the other scholarly source and experiment demonstrate how English accents isn’t based on someone’s familiarity and how “Standard English” contributes to these issues. At the end Standard English continues to influence someone perspective and leads to discrimination and unfairness in many various ways in someone’s life.  

Work Cite  

Cheng, Z.; She, Y.; Fu, J.; Xu, W. Familiarity Determines Whether Accent Affects Attitudes and Behaviors of the Listener. Behave. Sci. 22 May 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs14060430  

Levon, Erez, Devyani Sharma, Dominic J. L. Watt, Amanda Cardoso, and Yang Ye. “Accent Bias and Perceptions of Professional Competence in England.” Journal of English Linguistics, vol. 49, no. 4, Dec. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211046316 

Park, Eunjae. Social and Educational Challenges of International Students Caused by Accented English in the Australian Context: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Linguistic Experience. Griffith University, 2016. https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/f14cfcab-2c7c-5746-a560-1d7d6ed03b01/content 

Saleem, Safwat. “Why I Keep Speaking Up, Even When People Mock My Accent.” TED, 15 Aug. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4a0NvLTebw 

Thomas, Céline. Non-native Accents and Their Impact on Hiring Success. Radboud University Nijmegen, 7 June 2019. International Business Communication, Communication and Information Sciences. https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/server/api/core/bitstreams/60c79dae-b232-4acf-8b09-03298ac32a02/content