Intrigued by the video found here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPCXixIY2kw), I
did a search and found this article by Daily Mail Reporter (2013) (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302972/One-people-change-accent-sound-posh-job-chat-survey-finds.html),
which shines light on the issue of people taking on a “fake accent” in order to
increase their chances of getting a job or attractiveness to the opposite
gender. I explore the way accents may be indicative of one’s racial disposition
and their correlated standing within society, and suggest that it is a
phenomenon which is easily overlooked due to its non-overt or passive nature.
Accents as
racial markers
Deprez-Sims and Morris (2010:
418) suggest that an accent “refers to a distinctive way of speaking associated
with a particular group of people”. While everyone has an accent, the major
distinctions are between “local” and “foreign” accents. Accents are therefore important
in the social categorization of people into different social groups. In fact, a
social psychological study shows that it may even be more important than appearance
such as skin colour or facial features, accents are perceived as signifiers of
one’s racial background, and therefore provide some basis for the classification
of people into racial categories (Rakic, Steffens, & Mummendey, 2011).
Working in tandem with this categorization
is a framework of superiority being granted to the dominant racial group. Zeus
Leonardo (2013: 137) writes about the presence of “white privilege” and a “white
racial hegemony” within academic discourse. He argues that while “white racial
domination” may exist prior to our time, it is constantly being recreated and
reproduced at both an “individual and institutional level” (Leonardo, 2013: 139).
In some places – such as Australia or the US, people possessing a ‘white’
accent may be privileged over others because it places them within the dominant
racial category. Vass (2012: 3) calls this categorization of people the making
of “a racialised cultural landscape”.
Vass’ (2012) argument is that schools operate
as “a function of White property” and deploy “racialised grammars”. Within this
landscape, politics based on racial assumptions occur, and a dominant race is
privileged over others. While it may not be overtly racist, the privileging of a
certain accents over others seems to enter into the discourse of a passive form
of racism. The fixed categories of race are not questioned, and the disparate
privileging of persons is not adequately addressed. As a Singaporean Chinese, while
I may possess certain physical traits that are alike to a person from Chinese
descent born and raised in China, my accent is drastically different from
theirs. This simple example immediately problematizes the idea that race is a
fixed or clearly bounded category. More than that, the people are aware of
their own accents, and sometimes aim to associate themselves with the dominant ‘racial
group’, as I suggest is the aim of taking on a ‘fake accent’.
It seems that copying the accent of the
dominant racial group may, however, achieve the opposite. Unless the accent is a
perfect copy of the ‘original’, people may ‘see through’ the act and ‘call
their bluff’, and there is no switch between racial categories.
Bibliography
Daily Mail
Reporter. (2013, April 2). Our great posh pretence: One in five people
change their accent to sound more posh to get a job or chat someone up, survey
finds. Retrieved September 18, 2013, from Mail Online:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302972/One-people-change-accent-sound-posh-job-chat-survey-finds.html
Deprez-Sims, A., & Morris, S. B.
(2010). Accents in the workplace: Their
effects during a job interview. International Journal Of Psychology, 45(6),
417-426. doi:10.1080/00207594.2010.499950
Gluszek, A., & Dovidio, J. F.
(2010). The Way They Speak: A Social
Psychological Perspective on the Stigma of Nonnative Accents in Communication.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev, 14(2), 214-237. doi: 10.1177/1088868309359288
Leonardo, Z. (2004). The Color of Supremacy: Beyond the discourse
of ‘white privilege’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(2), 137-152,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2004.00057.x
Nguyen, H. T. (2012). What role do race, ethnicity, language and
gender play in the teaching profession?. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(5),
653-681. doi: 10.1080/13613324.2011.624504
Rakic, T., Steffens, M., Mummendey, A.
(2011). Blinded by the Accent! The Minor
Role of Looks in Ethnic Categorization. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 100(1), 16-29, doi: 10.1037/a0021522
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ReplyDeleteThis intrigued me; it's surprising how high the percentage of people faking accents is. It’s also strange how in your blog you mentioned how an accent may even overarch the overall appearance (such as skin colour and facial features) of an individual as I presumed the physical appearance would be the greatest influence.
ReplyDeleteThe video was a hilarious twist to the deeper racial issues you’ve addressed.
When reading your second paragraph I feel a deeper understanding and sense of sympathy toward those who fake accents. You mention how accents factor towards the categorisation of an individual. From my perception of the situation, I take it as the individual may fake an accent in order to belong to the certain workforce social group or to meet their standards. Unfortunately, although it is racist to assume one will not be accepted for a job position due to their differences, this may be the case for some areas. By faking an accent, it suggests that they are from a different social group with differing cultural attitudes and actions. This may be done to give an impression the individual belongs to that certain group, and thus the chances of being hired rising. Whether or not this actually works or not, it highlights the racial discriminations and inequalities within our workforces.