Why the Brain Doubts a Foreign Accent

Original source: SimoleonSense.com

Introduction & Excerpt (via Barbara Breckinridge &  Matthew S Mc Glone @ SciAm)

Pity the poor, forlorn foreign graduate teaching assistant at an American university – far from home and family, living on a meager stipend, cramming by day and grading by night, fielding questions from undergraduates like “Do people wear regular clothes in your country?” or “Are any of your relatives terrorists?”

Of the many indignities international students endure, accent discrimination may be the most mortifying, in part because it is still widely accepted in our society. Like skin color or attire, accent is a characteristic we routinely use to identify someone as unfamiliar or foreign. But while most people understand that discrimination based on visual appearance is wrong, bias against foreign speech patterns is not universally recognized as a form of prejudice. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on national origin, but is mum on the subject of accent bias. Moreover, employers who deny jobs to non-native speakers can protect themselves by arguing that a foreign accent impairs communication skills essential to the workplace.

…….

Lev-Ari and Keysar put this idea to the test in a simple experiment. They asked people to judge the truthfulness of trivia statements were recited by either native or non-native English speakers. (Example: A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can.) The non-native speakers had mild or heavy Asian, European, or Middle Eastern accents. The subjects were told that all the statements had been written by the researchers but, still, the subjects tended to doubt them more when recited with an accent.

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