Be proud of your language roots
I was surprised this morning to stumble across a press release posted on the San Francisco Chronicle’s site promoting accent reduction programmes in the US. The slant of the press release was to basically to highlight the fact that more than a quarter of people in the skilled workforce of the US who have either a doctoral degree, a degree or a master’s are “foreign-born” and how those individuals are missing out on opportunities in business because of their accents.
It is safe to say that international speakers must be valuable economically if they make up more than a quarter of the US workforce. The shocking part is that the press release claims many of these individuals are unable to convey the true level of their academic competence because of their roots. Roughly translated (pardon the pun) this suggests that people with foreign accents who are speaking English in the workplace are considered to be less academic and therefore less able to climb the career ladder. So US employees are held back in their roles because of accents, despite the massive push for more multilingual content across companies globally?
With offices and colleagues in the US, I am not convinced that this is the case but who am I to argue with facts? Ok, I’ll give it a go.
I feel passionate about accents and their perceived impact in the business environment because I am one of those people with a very strong accent. Born and raised in Glasgow, I left Scotland as soon as I had completed my degree at University and moved to London, the top financial centre of the world. I was offered the first job that I interviewed for, which thankfully has been a common theme in most jobs I have applied for. Is this because I was the best candidate? I hope so. Is it because I was memorable because of my accent in a sea of English people? I tend to think that it has played a pretty big role.
An accent alone will not get you the job. It has to be backed up with confidence, experience and an ability to speak articulately so that your interviewer will understand you – accent or no accent. I am extremely proud of my Scottish accent. Yes, I have had to slow down my delivery (even people in parts of Scotland can’t always keep up with a Glaswegian conversation) and certain words have definitely softened over my 11 years in England but this has been due to time spent with my peers and not a deliberate decision. I would never want to, nor would I ever expect a colleague to “reduce” their accent in order to progress professionally.
Perhaps I am missing something. Maybe some companies do consider people with different accents to be less able to progress, more risky to put in front of clients and less competent in delivering tasks. I hope not and I am pleased to say that my current employer would never discriminate in this way and encourages employees from different parts of the country and the world into their English-speaking offices.
Languages, dialects and accents are so precious. We should be doing everything we can to preserve them, not reduce them.
An interesting post for a couple of reasons. We tend to think if the USA as the land of the free where history has been shaped by immigrants and so there are equal opportunities for all. Sadly that’s not the case in real life, and even in the USA a persons speech can negatively influence others.
Socio-linguists recognize that accents do have a bearing on our perceptions about other people (rightly or wrongly) and in the UK certain accents, like those from Glasgow or Liverpool, are viewed in a slightly negative light. While we might be more open to accept regional accents old stereotypes do persist. However, since the population is much more fluid than in times past many people do “reduce” their accent when they move to a new part of the country.
The preservation of one’s ethnic and linguistic heritage is laudable and I am personally all in favour of it. Speaking another language incorrectly either because of accent distortion or sloppy vocabulary and constructions is another matter. Sometimes it appears that the more the world communicates using a lingua franca then the greater the necessity that this language, most frequently English, is spoken at the highest standard. The Americans and the Microsoft spellcheck US English fallback position have already contributed substantially to the deterioration of English, let them not be too hasty in criticising others.
I see what you are saying, but it seems that a native-English-speaker dialect may be different from an ESL accent. As far as I see, there is still consistency in what you are saying in your regional accent because you just pronounce things a certain way (say, “pattern” becomes “pahten”). However, being a non-native speaker of English, I think I can explain foreign accents not only by the influence by L1 but also by the fact that we’re confused as to the pronunciation of English words.
However, to comment on your post, I agree that businesses should not discriminate employees on the basis of accents. Still, if someone offered accent improvement classes in my area, I’d take it.
I think that a suitable training should be provided in such cases as now a days many businesses and not just local. This means available 24/7. For small business it is feasible to have this done in the same country, but for bigger businesses they have to sometimes outsource to be available 24/7 as well as cost cutting. I am in the US and I still feel that accent varies even in the people here. There cannot be a limit set on how one speaks, but there are ways to improve it.
Thanks
I think accent is someone’s identity and I don’t think it is necessary for non-native speaker to be trained to change into a certain type of English accent (American or British). The only concern is that different accent will cause confusion especially when doing oral communication,or more advanced translation services,like interpreting or so on. So my point is it is important to correct the pronunciation, but there is no harm to keep the lovely diversity.