Journal of Language and Discrimination, Vol 3, No 2 (2019)

Methods for the study of accent bias and access to elite professions

Devyani Sharma, Erez Levon, Dominic Watt, Yang Ye, Amanda Cardoso
Issued Date: 18 Dec 2019

Abstract


Fair access to employment is vital for improving social mobility in Britain today. As language is not explicitly protected by the Equality Act 2010, accent can become a proxy for other forms of discrimination at key junctures for social mobility such as recruiting to elite professions. The ‘Accent bias in Britain’ project (www.accentbiasbritain.org) aims to assess prevailing attitudes to accents in Britain and to assess the extent to which accent-based prejudice affects elite professions. In this article, we focus specifically on methodological innovations of this project, rather than detailed results. We describe our approach to four challenges in the study of accent bias: how to assess whether accent preferences actively interfere with the perception of expertise in candidates’ utterances; how to more precisely identify sources of bias in individuals; new technologies for real-time rating to establish whether specific ‘shibboleths’ trigger shifts in evaluation; and how to assess the efficacy of interventions for combating implicit bias. We suggest integrating best practices from the fields of linguistics, social psychology and management studies to develop sound interdisciplinary methods for the study of language, discrimination and social mobility.

Download Media

PDF Subscribers Only

DOI: 10.1558/jld.39979

References


Alemoru, K. (2015) ‘You don’t sound like them’: a sociolinguistic investigation into how race interacts with the perception and attitude towards Multicultural London English. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Sheffield, UK.

Altendorf, U. (2003) Estuary English: Levelling at the Interface of RP and South-Eastern British English. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.

Arrow, K. (1973) The theory of discrimination. In O. Ashenfelter and A. Rees (eds) Discrimination in Labor Markets 3–33. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Ashley, L., Duberley, J., Sommerlad, H. and Scholarios, D. (2015) A Qualitative Evaluation of Non-educational Barriers to the Elite Professions. London: Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/23163/1/A_qualitative_­evaluation_of_non-educational_barriers_to_the_elite_professions.pdf

Ashton, H. and Shepherd, S. (2012) Work on Your Accent: Clearer Pronunciation for Better Communication. London: Harper Collins.

Atkins, C. P. (1993) Do employment recruiters discriminate on the basis of nonstandard dialect? Journal of Employment Counselling 30: 108–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/
j.2161-1920.1993.tb00168.x

Axt, J. R., Casola, M. C. and Nosek, B. A. (2018) Reducing social judgment biases may require identifying the potential source of bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 45(8): 1232–51. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ngxks

Baratta, A. (2015) Standard English but not the standard accent. Paper presented at the Resisting the Standard conference, June, University of Sheffield, UK.

Baugh, J. (2003) Linguistic profiling. In S. Makoni, G. Smitherman, A. Ball and A. Spears (eds) Black Linguistics 155–68. London: Routledge.

Beal, J. (2004) The phonology of English dialects in the North of England. In B. Kortmann and E. W. Schneider (eds) A Handbook of Varieties of English, Volume 1 113–33. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Beal, J. (2009) Enregisterment, commodification and historical context: ‘Geordie’ versus ‘Sheffieldish’. American Speech 84: 138–56. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-012

Becker, G. (1957) The Economics of Discrimination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bertrand, M. and S. Mullainathan (2004) Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. American Economic Review 94: 991–1013. https://doi.org/10.1257/0002828042002561

Bishop, H., Coupland, N. and Garrett, P. (2005) Conceptual accent evaluation: thirty years of accent prejudice in the UK. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 37: 131–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/03740463.2005.10416087

Blanden, J., Goodman, A., Gregg, P. and Machin, S. (2005) Changes in intergenerational income mobility in Britain. In M. Corak (ed.) Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe 122–46. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511492549.007

Bless, H., Fiedler, K. and Strack, F. (2004) Social Cognition: How Individuals Construct Social Reality. New York: Psychology Press.

Buscha, F. and Sturgis, P. (2017) Declining social mobility? Evidence from five linked censuses in England and Wales 1971–2011. British Journal of Psychology 69(1): 154–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12275

Campbell-Kibler, K. (2008) I’ll be the judge of that: diversity in social perceptions of (ING). Language in Society 37(5): 637–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404508080974

Cardoso, A., Levon, E., Sharma, D., Watt, D. and Ye, Y. (2019) Inter-speaker variation and the evaluation of British English accents in employment contexts. Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. https://www.accentbiasbritain.org

Carlson, H. and McHenry, M. (2006) Effect of accent and dialect on employability. Journal of Employment Counseling 43: 70–83. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2006.tb00008.x

Chartered Institute for Personnel Development (CIPD) (2006) Diversity in Business: How Much Progress have Employers Made? https://www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/53CF3D4F-2215-4DA6-AEBF-C67C99A67F1C/0/diversbus0606.pdf

Cheshire, J., Fox, S., Kerswill, P. and Torgersen, E. (2008) Ethnicity, friendship network, and social practices as the motor of dialect change: linguistic innovation in London. Sociolinguistica 22: 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783484605299.1

Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. (2011) Contact, the feature pool, and the speech community: the emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15: 151–96. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.x

Clark, L. and Schleef, E. (2010) The acquisition of sociolinguistic evaluations among Polish-born adolescents learning English: evidence from perception. Language Awareness 19: 299–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2010.524301

Connelly, B., Certo, S. T., Ireland, R. D. and Reutzel, C. R. (2011) Signaling theory: a review and assessment. Journal of Management 37: 39–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310388419

Coupland, N. and Bishop, N. (2007) Ideologised values for British accents. Journal of Sociolinguistics 11: 74–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00311.x

Darity, W. and Mason, P. (1998) Evidence on discrimination in employment: codes of color, codes of gender. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12: 63–90. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.12.2.63

Devine, P. G., Forscher, P. S., Austin, A. J. and Cox, W. T. L. (2012) Long-term reduction in implicit racial prejudice: a prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48: 1267–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.06.003

Dixon, J., Mahoney, B. and Cocks, R. (2002) Accents of guilt? Effects of regional accent, race, and crime type on attributions of guilt. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 21: 162–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/02627X02021002004

Dunton, B. C. and Fazio, R. H. (1997) An individual difference measure of motivation to control prejudiced reactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23: 316–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297233009

Fabricius, A. (2002) Ongoing change in RP: evidence for the disappearing stigma of t-glottalling. English World-Wide 23: 115–36. https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.23.1.06fab

Fabricius, A. (2005) Mobility, contact and an accent norm: the case of Received Pronunciation. In B. Preisler, A. Fabricius, H. Haberland, S. Kjærbeck and K. Risager (eds) The Consequences of Mobility 120–34. Roskilde: Roskilde University Department of Language and Culture.

Fox, K. (2004) Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour. London: Arnold.

Fry, S. (2011) ‘Fry’s English Delight’ Series 4: Class. Series on Radio 4, 1 August.

Fuertes, J. N., Miville, M. L., Mohr, J. J., Sedlacek, W. E. and Gretchen, D. (2000) Factor structure and short form of the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development 33: 157–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481756.2000.12069007

Garrett, P., Coupland, N. and Williams, A. (1999) Evaluating dialect in discourse: teachers’ and teenagers’ responses to young English speakers in Wales. Language in Society 28: 321–54. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599003012

Giles, H. (1970) Evaluative reactions to accents. Educational Review 22: 211–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013191700220301

Giles, H. (1971) Ethnocentrism and the evaluation of accented speech. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 10: 187–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.
1971.tb00733.x

Giles, H., Baker, S. and Fielding, G. (1975) Communication length as a behavioural index of accent prejudice. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 6: 73–81. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1975.6.73

Giles, H., Wilson, P. and Conway, A. (1981) Accent and lexical diversity as determinants of impression formation and perceived employment suitability. Language Sciences 3: 91–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0388-0001(81)80015-0

Greening, J. (2019) Politicians of all colours have failed to deliver social mobility. The Times, 24 September.

Heath, A. and Cheung, S. (2006) Ethnic Penalties in the Labour Market: Employers and Discrimination. DWP Research Report no. 341. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130125104217/http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2005-2006/rrep341.pdf

Hiraga, Y. (2005) British attitudes towards six varieties of English in the USA and Britain. World Englishes 24: 289–308. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0883-2919.2005.00411.x

Huang, B. (2013) The effects of accent familiarity and language teaching experience on raters’ judgments of non-native speech. System 41: 770–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.07.009

James, L. and Smith, O. (2012) Get Rid of Your Accent for Business: The English Speech Training Manual, Part 3. London: Business and Technical Communication Services.

Jones, O. (2011) Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. London: Verso.

Kalin, R., Rayko, D. and Love, N. (1980) The perception and evaluation of job candidates with four different ethnic accents. In H. Giles, W. P. Robinson and P. M. Smith (eds) Language: Social Psychological Perspectives 197–202. Oxford: Pergamon Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-024696-3.50034-X

Kerswill, P. (2001) Mobility, meritocracy and dialect levelling: the fading (and phasing) out of Received Pronunciation. In P. Rajamäe and K. Vogelberg (eds) British Studies in the New Millennium: The Challenge of the Grassroots 45–58. Tartu: University of Tartu.

Killick, R. and Eckley, I. A. (2014) changepoint: an R package for changepoint analysis. Journal of Statistical Software 58: 1–19. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v058.i03

Kushins, E. (2014) Sounding like your race in the employment process: an experiment on speaker voice, race identification, and stereotyping. Race and Social Problems 6: 237–48. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-014-9123-4

Labov, W., Ash, S., Ravindranath, M., Weldon, T., Baranowski, M. and Nagy, N. (2011) Properties of the sociolinguistic monitor. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(4): 431–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00504.x

Lambert, W., Hodgson, R. C., Gardener, R. C. and Fillenbaum, S. (1960) Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60: 44–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0044430

Lerner, J. S. and Tetlock, P. E. (1999) Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin 125: 255–75. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.255

Levon, E. and Buchstaller, I. (2015) Perception, cognition and linguistic structure: the effect of linguistic modularity and cognitive style on sociolinguistic processing. Language Variation and Change 27: 319–48. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394515000149

Levon, E. and Fox, S. (2014) Social salience and the sociolinguistic monitor: a case study of ING and TH-fronting in Britain. Journal of English Linguistics 42(3): 185–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424214531487

Levon, E., Sharma, D., Ye, Y., Cardoso, A. and Watt, D. (2019a) Accent bias and perceptions of professional competence in the U.K. Presentation at the International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 10), Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. https://www.accentbiasbritain.org

Levon E., Sharma, D., Ye, Y., Cardoso, A. and Watt, D. (2019b) Real-time evaluations of British accents: the effect of social and psychological factors on judgments of professional competence. Presentation at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV 48), Oregon, United States. https://www.accentbiasbritain.org

Lippi-Green, R. (1997) English with an Accent: Language, Ideology and Discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge

Llamas, C. and Watt, D. (2015) Scottish, English, British? Innovations in attitude measurement. Language and Linguistics Compass 8: 610–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12109

Llamas, C., Watt, D. and Johnson, D. (2009) Linguistic accommodation and the salience of national identity markers in a border town. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 28: 381–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09341962

Milroy, J. and Milroy, L. (1985) Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation. London: Routledge.

Montgomery, C. (2007) Northern English dialects: a perceptual approach. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, UK. Retrieved on 11 October 2018 from http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1203.

Montgomery, C. and Moore, E. F. (2018) Evaluating S(c)illy voices: the effects of salience, stereotypes, and co-present language variables on real-time reactions to regional speech. Language 94(3): 629–61. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0038

Mugglestone, L. (1995) Talking Proper: The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Parel, K. and Ball, J. (2013) Oxford University accused of bias against ethnic minority applicants. The Guardian, 26 February.

Phelps, E. (1972) The statistical theory of racism and sexism. American Economics Review 62: 659–61.

Purkiss, S. L. S., Perrewé, P. L., Gillespie, T. L., Mayes, B. T. and Ferris, G. R. (2006) Implicit sources of bias in employment interview judgments and decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 101(2): 152–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2006.06.005

Purnell, T., Idsardi, W. and Baugh, J. (1999) Perceptual and phonetic experiments on American English dialect identification. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18 (1): 10–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X99018001002

Puttenham, G. (1589) The Arte of English Poesie. Facsimile edition (ed. B. Hathaway). Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1970.

Rakić, T., Steffens, M. C. and Mummendey, A. (2011) When it matters how you pronounce it: the influence of regional accents on job interview outcome. British Journal of Psychology 102: 868–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02051.x

Reay, D. (2009) Making sense of white working class educational underachievement. In K. P. Sveinsson (ed.) Who Cares about the White Working Class? 22–8. Chichester: St Richards Press.

Renn, J. and Terry, J. M. (2009) Operationalizing style: quantifying style shift in the speech of African American adolescents. American Speech 84: 367–90. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-2009-030

Rich, J. (2014) What do field experiments of discrimination in markets tell us? A meta-analysis of studies conducted since 2000. IZA Discussion Papers 8584. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labour.

Rickford, J. and Rickford, A. E. (1995) Dialect readers revisited. Linguistics and Education 7: 107–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/0898-5898(95)90003-9

Roberts, C., Davies, E. and Jupp, T. (1992) Language and Discrimination: A Study of Communication in Multi-ethnic Workplaces. London: Longman.

Rudman, L. A. and Glick, P. (1999) Feminized management and backlash toward agentic women: the hidden costs to women of a kinder, gentler image of middle-managers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77: 1004–10. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.5.1004

Sharma, D. (2017) Scalar effects of social networks on language variation. Language Variation and Change 29(30): 393–418. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394517000205

Sharma, D. and Rampton, B. (2015) Lectal focusing in interaction: a new methodology for the study of style variation. Journal of English Linguistics 43(1): 3–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424214552131

Sharpe, E. and Rowles, J. H. (2011) How to Do Standard English Accents: From Traditional RP to the New 21st-Century Neutral Accent. London: Oberon.

Shaw, G. B. (1916) Pygmalion. New York: Brentano.

Siddique, H. (2019) Minority ethnic Britons face ‘shocking’ job discrimination. The Guardian, 17 January.

Smith, E. (2010) Underachievement, failing youth and moral panics. Evaluation and Research in Education 23: 37–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500791003605102

Snell, J. (2010) From sociolinguistic variation to socially strategic stylisation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14: 618–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00457.x

Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) (2014) Diversity in the Legal Profession: Workforce data for Solicitors’ Firms 2013/14. http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/diversity-toolkit/diverse-law-firms.page

Stuart-Smith, J., Pryce, G., Timmins, C. and Gunter, B. (2013) Television can also be a factor in language change: evidence from an urban dialect. Language 89: 501–36. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0041

Sullivan, R. (2010) Barriers to the Legal Profession. Legal Services Board (LSB). Retrieved on 12 December 2019 from https://www.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/media/2010-Diversity-literature-review.pdf.

Swift, J. (1712) A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue. London: Benj. Tooke

Swim, J. K., Aikin, K. J., Hall, W. S. and Hunter, B. A. (1995) Sexism and racism: old-fashioned and modern prejudices. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68: 199–214. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.68.2.199

Tajfel, H. (1969) Cognitive aspects of prejudice. Journal of Social Issues 25: 79–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1969.tb00620.x

Tombs, A. and Rao Hill, S. (2014) The effect of service employees’ accent on customer reactions. European Journal of Marketing 48: 2051–70. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-03-2013-0115

Toynbee, P. (2011) ‘The Class Ceiling’. BBC Radio 4 series (first episode 8 September).

Trudgill, P. (1972) Sex, covert prestige and linguistic change in urban British English of Norwich. Language in Society 1: 179–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500000488

Trudgill, P. (1974) The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Trudgill, P. (1975) Accent, Dialect and the School. London: Edward Arnold.

Trudgill, P. (1986) Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell

Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science 185(4157): 1124–1131.

Uhlmann E. L. and Cohen, G. L. (2005) Constructed criteria: redefining merit to justify discrimination. Psychological Science 16: 474–80.

van Hofwegen, J. and Wolfram, W. (2010) Coming of age in African American English: a longitudinal study. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(4): 427–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00452.x

Wang, Z., Arndt, A., Singh, S. and Biernat, M. (2009) The impact of accent stereotypes on service outcomes and its boundary conditions. Advances in Consumer Research 36: 940–1.

Watson, K. and Clark, L. (2013) How salient is the NURSE~SQUARE merger? English Language and Linguistics 17: 297–323. https://doi.org/10.1017/S136067431300004X

Watson, K. and Clark, L. (2015) Exploring listeners’ real-time reactions to regional accents. Language Awareness 24: 38–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2014.882346

Watt, D. (2002) ‘I don’t speak with a Geordie accent, I speak, like, the Northern accent’: contact-induced levelling in the Tyneside vowel system. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6: 44–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00176

Wood, M., Hales, J., Purdon, S., Sejersen, T. and Hayllar, O. (2009) A test for racial discrimination in recruitment practice in British cities. DWP Research Report no. 607. http://www.bollettinoadapt.it/old/files/document/3626ATESTFORRACIALDI.pdf

Wood, S. (2006) Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction with R. Boca Raton: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781420010404

Zentella, A. C. (1997) Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Oxford: Blackwell.

Zschirnt, E. and Ruedin, D. (2016) Ethnic discrimination in hiring decisions: a meta-analysis of correspondence tests 1990–2015. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42: 1115–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1133279


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.



Equinox Publishing Ltd - 415 The Workstation 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)114 221-0285 - Email: [email protected]

Privacy Policy