Language is shared and put discrimination away

Heng Ding

In the whole process of paying attention to the relationship between second languages, language diversity, and social justice, I think the social problems caused by dialects or accents haven’t been paid enough attention to. This blog will start with my own experience to discuss the discrimination caused by dialect or accent which often plays the role of the most direct “criterion” for judging other people.

I was born in the south of Jiangsu Province, China. In Jiangsu, there has always been some default “stigma chain” exists. Due to historical, economic, and many other factors, there are great differences between Southern and Northern Jiangsu, such as culture, living habits, and dialects. The resulting phenomenon is that people in these two parts don’t like each other and think the other is inferior. Among the many factors, dialect is one of the most important judgment bases because the dialects in southern Jiangsu and Northern Jiangsu are completely different. Therefore, the “regional identity” of a Jiangsu person can be judged by the accent alone. The consequence of this judgment is that the mutual discrimination between the north and the south is constantly emphasized and deepened. Facing such a phenomenon in my hometown, I often feel very powerless, as the concept has already been rooted in people’s minds. But I think the thing I can do, as a second language educator, is to tell everyone that, whether we use the word “dialect” or “accent” to describe the phonological and phonological characteristics of a local variety, language is at least not a tool to judge or measure a person’s strengths and weaknesses.

Actually, accent discrimination does not exist only in my hometown. Another example I know is the discrimination of African American vernacular English (AAVE). To some extent, dialects are the markers of power in society, (Winford, 1997). Over time, AAVE has been seen as an inferior dialect, and although it’s incorrect, such a concept has been accepted by many people around the world. As a result, people who speak AAVE are often judged or discriminated against by those who speak “standard English” (Grace, 2020).

All this social discrimination at home and abroad makes me think that if the accent or dialect will cause such great influence on social justice, does someone’s accent need to be corrected? If so, to sound like who? A native speaker or a group of people who belongs to a “superior” region? But what does that even mean? An accent can be a stigma, even among native speakers of the same language. These variations, determined by geography, class and race, are always identified with stereotypes. Fleeing from one means embracing another. Even though everybody has an accent, there certainly is such a thing as accent discrimination and most of us have either suffered or witnessed it at some point. Accent discrimination is, in the end, all about the place: who belongs and who doesn’t? I, for one, enjoy these ghostly presences of something strange in a familiar environment. They are a reminder of the fact that language doesn’t belong to anyone, not even to its native speakers. Language is shared. It is, in principle, a space where everyone is welcome and cooperates toward mutual comprehension, and the very fact that there are accents in the first place, the fact that we can still understand each other through all the differences is the most conclusive proof of the hospitality at the heart of every language.

References

Grace, G. (2020). DataSpace: Names, accents, and racial linguistic profiling: Linguistic and racial prejudice as mechanisms of discrimination against speakers of African American vernacular English. Princeton University. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01gb19f8846.

Winford, D. (1997, January 1). On the origins of African American vernacular English – A Creolist perspective: Part I: The sociohistorical background. Diachronica. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.14.2.05win.