by Daria Jakubisiak for 'Young linguistics' magazine
Three quarters of people in the UK think they hear a lot more accents in every day life than they used to and almost 80% enjoys hearing a variety of accents. What about the remaining 20% of the nation? Does the diversity of accents bothers them?
Teachers from St. Bernard's High School in Ealing, London carried out the survey where they asked a group of teenagers from different ethnic backgrounds about how they feel towards their accents. The results were absolutely shocking. 42 out of 50 students admitted to converge their accents in order to fit into the community. Even harder to believe is that the only reason for it was to avoid the issues which could be caused by other student's negative attitudes towards accents. This is truly outrageous. Being forced to hide the sense of your personal identity just so you don't get discriminated.
Accent stereotyping is one of the main issues which have always existed. People make assumptions about others based on where they come from. 'Can you hear that received pronunciation? She must be very arrogant as she is definitely from London.' However, not everyone realises that sounding 'posh' does not make you arrogant. It makes you sound intelligent, which presents your high status. To be able to speak with the received pronunciation you don't need to come from London. You can come from any part of the world, because it is about the way you were brought up. You don't like someone's accent? That is completely understandable as everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But remember not to make any wrong assumptions towards others based on their accents as you can offend them. We are judged by the way we speak on a daily basics, friends may laugh at us just because our accent might sound 'funny' to them as well as many employers may turn down our chances of employment due to their dislike towards our accent.. but is this the right thing to do? Being discriminated just because of the accent might cause mental breakdowns for many of us as well as other health issues which link to it. It can also make us feel isolated and disliked by others.No form of discrimination is acceptable so why would accent discrimination be right?
I like the wide variety of topics you cover in your article. To improve you could maybe include something on divergence to contrast what you wrote on convergence.
ReplyDeleteGood use of ideas, theories and statistics. However, you could add a quote to your picture and have a strapline.
ReplyDeleteYou cover a lot of different aspects in this article, which shows you have a good range of contextual knowledge. To improve: add theories and relate them to the points you've already made.
ReplyDeleteWell written and appealing to the casual reader, as it is something that everyone can relate to. In order to improve, I would suggest adding more reference to language theory in order to offer some proper explanation for the topic presented in your article.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you used a rhetorical questions to round of your article and how you looked at different peoples opinions to your points as it allows a wider audience to relate to it.to improve you could link to theories more
ReplyDelete