Who Gets to Count as a Heritage Speaker? One of the most troubling aspects of current discussions around heritage language speakers is how narrow and exclusionary some definitions have become. In some contexts, children who begin actively acquiring a heritage language after the age of five are excluded from being considered “real” heritage speakers. In […]
Continue readingCategory Archives: Accents
The Voice and the Self: How Accent Shapes Who We Are
After exploring how accents are perceived, evaluated and adapted, a final question remains: Why does all of this feel so personal? Accent is not just pronunciation. It is your linguistic biography. Among all features of language, accent may be the most intimate. Vocabulary can be learned from textbooks, grammar can be practiced and […]
Continue reading
Training the Ear: Listening as a Social Skill
Discussions about accent tend to focus solely on the speaker and language learners are often encouraged to reduce their accent, improve their pronunciation and approximate native patterns of speech. Entire industries have developed around accent training and pronunciation coaching with the aim to help language learners to become more intelligible as possible when using the […]
Continue reading
The Chameleon Effect in Speech: How Voices Adapt to Belong
Have you ever noticed that you sound different depending on who you’re talking to? When certain ways of speaking are consistently valued more than others, speakers rarely remain unaffected. Instead, many begin to adjust to their social environment. A person may pronounce certain words differently at home than at work. A student may sound one […]
Continue reading
Accent Hierarchies: The Native Speaker Myth
1. What are We Reacting To? If listeners react so quickly to accents, an important question follows: What exactly are they reacting to? From a linguistic perspective, the answer is simple: variation. From a social perspective, however, the answer is more complex: hierarchy. No accent is inherently superior to another. Every variety of a language […]
Continue reading