English language learners face bias and unfair presumptions based on the “heaviness” of their accents.
“Accent refers to the phonological characteristics of speech. In that sense, everyone has an accent,” Meltem Sener, senior researcher at the Intercultural Communication Faculty of Theology, says.
However, it’s clear that despite all of us speaking with some sort of accent, we can still label who “has an accent” or not.
Additionally, a study done by Eriko Atagi, a research scientist at the Volen National Center for Complex Systems showed that native speakers of a language were easily sensitive to hearing foreign accents, and another study done by James Flege, a professor emeritus at the university of alabama showed that we can linguistically profile a non native speaker and make subconscious assumption about their race and ethnic background in as quick as 30 seconds.
Furthermore, these assumptions, while subconscious, can fuel people to believe misconceptions about the speaker.
“They are ridiculed by others especially if their accent is from somewhere very socially stigmatized, people won’t take you seriously, and I believe it’s because of the way media portrays them, especially social media, people tend to look down on them for the accent,” Says Kamila Toor, sophomore at the Oregon Islamic Academy
In contrast to those assumptions Toor speaks of how the treatment of language learners is hypocritical, saying, “People with accents are people who have taken the initiative to learn an entire new language separate from their own. One who cannot relate to being disciplined enough to learn a new language doesn’t have room to hate.”
The difficulties of learning a language are even harder when the language learner has family members who don’t speak the same language.
“Sometimes it’s really hard to communicate with my aunts or some people that speak Arabic because they know Arabic , but I don’t as much Arabic especially different dialects,” says Eman Hussein, Sudanese American here at Tigard High.
When the language is a barrier, speakers resort to using tone or body language to help communicate.
“I use hand gestures and translating aid from other bilingual family members to help communicate but overall we kind of just keep it at small talk,” says Toor.
Clearly, the difficulties of learning a language are hard enough, further discrimination and bias can tear down a language learner’s confidence.
“People who are just fluent in English and only know English, they hear someone else trying to speak English, they go, oh, it’s pronounced this way or they snicker when you pronounce something. They don’t realize that those are like some of the hardest things that you want to hear as a language learner,” says Salvador Garcia, English language learner and Two-Way Immersion teacher here at THS
The most important thing to remember is to be mindful of others and respectful to everyone involved, its everyone’s first time living. “one of the things start with is respect. And the respect is that we have to respect everyone from all places,” says Garcia.