With Ella Jeffries and Amanda Cole at the University of Essex, we look at linguistic discrimination in the form of ‘accentism’. This discrimination derives from the associations that listeners make between a speaker’s accent and negative social judgements.
The current project aims to determine to what degree accent stereotypes are already present in children starting primary school, as little is known about how and when these associations form in children. We measured neural activity (ERPs) in primary school children while took take part in an adapted Implicit Association Test (IAT), providing two measurements of potential unconscious bias.
Our results showed emerging positive associations with the standard accent and bias against regional accents, even in children as young as five years old. This effect also appears to be mitigated in children with greater exposure to diverse accents, in cases where their caregivers are from different regions of the UK.
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For more information on accentism, check out The Accentism Project
This project is funded by the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust.