Author: cvaughn

Kendra Siebert

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Since the 1920s, advertising has grown massively. Today, digital marketing experts agree that in an average day, most Americans are exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 ads. We know that ads influence perception and behavior; consumers’ views are shaped by the things they see on TV and by the materials they read (Tajolosa, 2013). However, we know significantly less about the role that language plays in video advertising, the effectiveness of particular accents on consumer behavior, and the way linguistic choices perpetuate social stigmas.

In recent years, foreign languages have been incorporated into American advertising with greater frequency, acting as an example of the way multilingualism is used in economically driven displays, such as marketing and advertising texts. Helen Kelly-Holmes connects this practice to linguistic fetishism, a concept she defines in her chapter of Visual Communication as “the phenomenon of using languages for symbolic (fetishised) rather than utility (instrumental-communicative) purposes in commercial texts” (135). This phenomenon is not only at play in the United States, but in other parts of the world, as well. In current intercultural advertising in Europe, languages are used not for their communicative function, but for their symbolic function. In other words, it is unimportant whether the advertisee understands the foreign word in an advertisement, so long as it calls up the cultural stereotype of the country with which the language is associated (Kelly-Holmes, 2000).

The use of foreign languages in advertising is not about erasure of difference, but about the display and highlighting of difference. As Kress and Van Leeuwen explain, “we have available the culturally produced semiotic resources of our societies, and are aware of the conventions and constraints which are socially imposed on our making of signs” (2006). In 2007, researchers Jos Hornikx, Frank van Meurs and Marianne Starren investigated some of these semiotic (symbolically based) associations that Dutch readers had with multilingual advertising, specifically in French, German and Spanish. They based their research on the principle that in multilingual advertising, a foreign language is often used for symbolic purposes, with the assumption that the associations carried by the foreign language are transferred to the product that is advertised.

But under what circumstances do advertisements specifically incorporate foreign accented English in their commercials? What is the desired effect, and how does it influence viewers? My research will aim to address these questions through examining the kinds of associations viewers’ make with foreign accented English, the valence they select (positive, negative or neutral), and the ways these associations relate to general appreciation of an advertisement. I believe this is an important area of study, because all language relations do, to a greater or lesser extent, reflect some type of power relations, and through studying the associations that people have to foreign accented English in advertising, we can better understand linguistic attitudes and human behavior.

 

Works Cited

Hornikx, Jos & Meurs, Frank & Starren, Marianne. (2007). An Empirical Study of Readers’ Associations with Multilingual Advertising: The Case of French, German and Spanish in Dutch Advertising. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development – J MULTILING MULTICULT DEVELOP. 28. 204-219. 10.2167/jmmd482.0.

Irvine, Judith T. and Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Kelly-Holmes, Helen. “Bier, Parfum, Kaas: Language Fetish in European Advertising.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, Jan. 2000, pp. 67–82., www.researchgate.net/publication/254088507_Bier_Parfum_Kaas_language_fetish_in_European_advertising.

Kelly-Holmes, Helen. “Linguistic Fetish: The Sociolinguistics of Visual Multilingualism.” Visual Communication, De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 135–151.

Kress, Gunther and Theo Van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London/New York: Routledge.

Tajolosa, Teresita D. “Motivations for Code-Switching in Advertising and the Construction of Consumers’ Multiple Identities: The Case of Philippine TV Commercials.” Philippine ESL Journal, vol. 11, July 2013, pp. 48–85.

Brooke Gardner

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In today’s increasingly global world, it is vital that the next generation of leaders can listen to and learn from individuals who do not speak English as their first-language. Institutions of higher learning such as the University of Oregon have become centers for students to learn to work with individuals from other cultures with nearly 12% of the student body comprised of international students. It is important to understand how young adults interact with these foreign accented individuals not only as peers, but also when they are in positions of authority and teaching. In most major corporations, the workplace is full of daily interactions with both colleagues and supervisors who are foreign accented.

Despite living in a socially progressive world, in the US discrimination on the basis of accent is a largely accepted way for people to express their prejudices. These biases have implications in employment as native-speaking teachers have preferential treatment over non-native speakers in terms of hiring, salary, and employment perks (Kamhi-Stein, 2004). Additionally, foreign accents can influence comprehension rates. A 1992 study of undergrads from a large southeastern university showed that perceived accent based on the ethnicity of the instructor influences students’ comprehension (Rubin). The students listened to a lecture recorded in Standard American English while seeing a picture of either a Caucasian or Asian instructor. Then students were tested on their listening comprehension as well as asked questions about the attitude, background, value, and appearance of the instructor. The responses to the ethnically Asian instructor were in line with what responses would be had the speaker been nonstandard accented. Additionally, listening comprehension decreased with the perceived nonstandard accent.

Familiarity with the accent also plays a role. In 2017, Ballard and Winke conducted a study with 121 students from a midwestern university. Using an online survey, they had students listen to speech samples about familiar and unfamiliar topics and then rate speakers on intelligibility, comprehensibility, accentedness and acceptability as a teacher. When the students perceived the speakers as native, they increased their ratings for the acceptability as a teacher as well as comprehensibility. There may be an unconscious bias that occurs in students against understanding non-native speakers. To combat this bias as well as the conscious biases students hold, universities may need to look into how they facilitate students’ relationships with and opinions of these non-native teachers. If the university has the goal of equipping students to succeed in the global workplace, it needs to help prevent students from developing or expanding upon biases against non-native speakers.

My research will aim to understand how students’ evaluations of professors relate to accent and language. Additionally, the goal is to further understand at what point accent becomes an important feature for students to evaluate professors. A lot of previous research on students’ opinions of non-native teachers revolves around language teachers. This research will expand on the understanding of students’ attitudes across different subjects. When the student perceives the class subject to be harder, is there a more negative attitude toward the accent? If this is the case, perhaps students are using accents as excuses for their own lack of understanding. This could be causing a dangerous way of thinking for future employees. These biases that may be strengthened and justified in the classroom may influence how willing we are to learn from non-native speakers. Ultimately, understanding how non-native accents are used to discriminate will be helpful to our collective understanding of the discrimination that is still prevalent in our society.

 

Works cited

Ballard, Laura and Paula Winke. (2017). 7 Students’ Attitudes Towards English Teachers’ Accents: The Interplay of Accent Familiarity, Comprehensibility, Intelligibility, Perceived Native Speaker Status, and Acceptability as a Teacher. Second Language Pronunciation Assessment: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 107, 121-140.

Kamhi-Stein, Lia D. (2004). Learning and Teaching from Experience: Perspectives on Nonnative English-Speaking Professionals. University of Michigan Press.

Rubin, D. L. (1992). Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Research in higher education, 33(4), 511-531.

V Árva, P Medgyes. (2000). Native and non-native teachers in the classroom. System, 28(3), 355-372.

Laura Queen

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If you have spent any time around undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students you have likely heard complaints about the accents of their non-native English speaking instructors. It is an instructor’s job to teach, after all – how frustrating for an accent to get in the way and, sometimes, even be perceived as making the material more difficult to learn. These complaints about the perceived incomprehensibility of foreign-born professors or graduate student instructors run rampant amongst U.S. undergraduates studying STEM fields. A survey of students’ perceptions of instructor accents showed that only 29.7% of respondents agreed with the statement, “Foreign accent of a faculty does not affect my ability to learn.” (Kavas, 2008) Sometimes this frustration is communicated from student to parent and the negative language attitudes are revealed in alumni magazines, as in the example shown below (Lippi-Green, 2012).

“A more recent experience concerns my daughter, a recent graduate of the engineering college. Most of her undergraduate experience was with TAs, many of whom were ill equipped to communicate the language let alone ideas. For $10,000 a year in out-of-state tuition we expected more.” – Fall 1993; letter to the “Alumni Voices” section of the University of Michigan LSA magazine. (Lippi-Green, 2012)

The pervasiveness of language attitudes in university-level STEM education is in part due to the large proportion of foreign-born academics and the perceived difficulty of these fields. Thousands of academics from around the world come to the U.S. as immigrants or on visas; in STEM, these scholars can make up a large portion of faculty while, in other fields, their representation can be relatively invisible (Gahungu, 2011). Further, the perceived difficulty of STEM subjects can lead to greater frustration toward communication and understanding barriers.

Linguists would remind us, however, that communication is a two-way street. While training and preparing instructors to teach courses in English is important, students have an equal responsibility as listeners to confront their biases and train themselves to understand. Professors and graduate students coming from other countries are facing a myriad of challenges; the least U.S. students can do is meet them halfway.

Students are often not taking up this responsibility and, in fact, let biases and stereotypes about ethnicity drive their perception of accents more than the accents themselves. A study by Rubin and Smith (1992) showed that students can hear the exact same lecture but, when given different photos representing the speaker (one caucasian and one asian), make different assessments of the teaching quality. When presented with a science lecture, the students rated the correctness of the lecture 12.5 when shown a caucasian instructor and 7.31 when shown an asian instructor (scoring out of 14).

To confront this communication issue, supplementing instructor training with explicit linguistic instruction for undergraduates may be a solution. After all, miscommunication is a lose-lose situation and it is only fitting for both parties to meet in the middle with training for increased cross-cultural awareness. A study examining the effects of linguistic training for second language english comprehension produced positive results. Social work students who received specific training in Vietnamese English accents gained significant confidence in their ability to interact successfully with second language english speakers (Derwing, 2002). Interventions with explicit linguistic training like in this study provide a possible route for reconciling the frustrations and negative attitudes of U.S. undergraduates towards non-native English speaking instructors.

 

Works Cited:

Derwing, T. M., Rossiter, M. J. & Munro, M. J. Teaching Native Speakers to Listen to Foreign-accented Speech. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23, 245–259 (2002).

Gahungu, A. Integration of Foreign-Born Faculty in Academia: Foreignness as an Asset. International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation 6, (2011).

Kavas, A. & Kavas, A. An exploratory study of undergraduate college students’ perceptions and attitudes toward foreign accented faculty. College Student Journal (2008).

Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent. Routledge, 2012.

Rubin, D. L. Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Res High Educ 33, 511–531 (1992).

Nelly Nouboussi Nkenfack

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Most people would argue that the colonial era is over and African countries, which gained their independence throughout the second half of the twentieth century, are free. However, the legacy of European imperialism on the African continent is still very apparent in different aspects of society. Most french-speaking West and Central African countries use the Francs, a currency owned by France, and thus have to pay taxes to France every year. The most obvious of these legacies are the colonial languages. In his paper, “Language attitudes in West Africa,” Efurosibina Adegbija refers to the dominance of colonial languages in many west African countries as “the unsevered or supposedly unseverable umbilical cord” (Adegbija 2000) This imagery is powerful because it suggests that colonial languages continue to connect many African countries to their ex-colonial masters.

Cameroon is a developing country with many of the issues that developing countries face (high unemployment rate, corruption, etc..). Thus, many young adults want to go Europe or North America to continue their education (and many are able to through different opportunities). Also, because of the way that Western countries are portrayed in the media (everyone is rich) people who live in these countries are generally regarded as above those who do not. Cameroon was colonized by French and England (and Germany and Spain) so these are the official languages of the country. The Cameroonian accent is very different from the French accent, which is generally regarded by most Cameroonians as sophisticated. This stereotype is very pervasive as people outwardly admire the French accent and try to copy it when they become wealthy, or after spending as little as one month in France. When Cameroonians children who were born in France come to visit, most children want to play with them. I adopted that attitude myself and grew up considering the French accent as more beautiful than mine.

Multiple studies have examined different aspects of children’s dialect perception, from their ability to detect the difference between two accents to their attitudes regarding those different accents. Laura Wagner found that five- to six-year-old American children can categorize speakers based on their accents, especially when asked to differentiate native-accented speakers from foreign accented-speakers (Wagner 2014). These results replicated experiments conducted by Girard and colleagues who found that five- to six-year-old French speakers could not distinguish between their native accent and a regional variant but could distinguish their own accent from a foreign one (Girard, Foccia and Goslin 2008). Kinzler and colleagues found that infants as young as five-month-old can differentiate their own accents from foreign accents (Kinzler, Dupoux and Spelke 2007). These studies show that children develop the ability to detect the difference between their native accent and a foreign accent from a very young age.

Being able to detect the difference between two accents does not imply that children have attitudes towards these accents. Studies have shown though that children prefer speakers of their native language. In the study conducted by Kinzler and colleagues mentioned above, they found that children preferred to look at picture of a person who had previously spoken in their native accent compared to someone who spoke in a foreign accent (Kinzler, Dupoux and Spelke 2007). Another study conducted by Kinzler and colleagues found that children five-years-old prefer other children of their own race when they are silent but prefer speakers with their native accents, even when they are of a difference race (Kinzler et al. 2007). This showed that young children use accent as a salient social cue, to a greater extent than race.

These studies show that children tend to prefer speakers of their native accent over foreign accents. However, I do not suspect these studies to show the same results for five-years-old children in Cameroon, due to the colonial background and the present situation. For my project I plan to replicate the magic box experiment (Rosenthal 1974) on 5 to 6 years old children to determine their attitudes towards each accent. I predict that five-year-old children will prefer speakers with the French accent. Based on my prediction, I will to conduct a similar study on younger children to determine the age at which they make the switch from preferring their own accent to preferring the French accent.

Multiple studies have examined language attitudes in Africa but most of them compare colonial languages to indigenous African languages. Most of the studies suggest that the dominance of colonial languages is due to their association with prosperity and upward mobility. Nkonko Kamwangamulu and Alla Tovares discuss the ideology of development and argue that English is dominant over indigenous languages within Kenya and South Africa because of policies that makes Engligh speakers more competitive in terms of employment and personal success (Kamwangamulu and Tovares 2016). They discuss the fact that some native speakers of indigenous languages hold negative attitudes towards them and consider them worthless (Kamwangamulu and Tovares 2016). This dominance can sometimes be directly influenced by ex-colonial masters. For example the British Council, in collaboration with the Nigerian Federal Government, funded a Communication Skills project between 1988 and 1993, aimed at improving English standards within Nigerian universities by sending books and boosting projects regarding the image of English in Nigeria (Adegbija 2000). In that same paper, Adegbija asked Nigerian respondents what they think about the use of Nigeria or other indigenous languages for education. While 57.1% of respondents believed that nigerians could learn better if taught in their mother tongue (indigenous languages),73.4% of respondents believed that Nigerian languages could not cope with modern sciences (Adegbija 2000). This study shows again, that native speakers of indigenous languages have negative attitudes towards these in terms of their ability to compete with English within the country and at the global level.

The only study that examined accents is a very recent study conducted by Pedro Álvarez-Mosquera and Alejandro Marín-Gutiérrez in 2018. They use the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to examine the attitudes of young LI South Africans indigenous speakers towards the standard South African English and Afrikaans-accented English (Álvarez-Mosquera and Marín-Gutiérrez 2018). The authors measured reaction times to the association of standard South African English and Afrikaans-accented English to positive and negative words on 81 young college students. They found that participants have statistically significant negative attitudes towards Afrikaans-accented English speakers (Álvarez-Mosquera and Marín-Gutiérrez 2018). In the background section, the authors discuss the history of the two languages in the country as a potential explanation for the predicted results. Due to the Bantu Education Act (1953), Afrikaans became known as the language of oppression and after the end of Apartheid, it was downgraded in sociopolitical and educational terms (Álvarez-Mosquera and Marín-Gutiérrez 2018). For example, it was removed as a language of instruction in many higher education institutions (Álvarez-Mosquera and Marín-Gutiérrez 2018). Conversely, the Bantu Education Act led to the enhancement of the status of English in the country. It dominated parliament, government institutions, media, etc (Álvarez-Mosquera and Marín-Gutiérrez 2018). Thus the association of Afrikaans with oppression and English with advancement within the country contributes to the negative attitudes towards Afrikaans-accented English.

From the results of most of the studies examining language attitudes in African countries, we can conclude that the association of a certain language with development and prosperity leads people to have positive attitudes towards that language, and subsequently towards the accent associated with that language. In Cameroon, English and French are used in higher institutions. Most employers require people to have at least a baccalaureate degree, which is the equivalent of a high school diploma. That exam is only offered in English or French within the country and not in one of the many indigenous languages. English and French are thus associated with development and upward mobility. Based on the results from cited studies, I children will have positive attitudes towards French-accented French compared to Cameroon-accented French.

This project is important because it will potentially add to the body of evidence showing that a country’s history can have a significant effect on the type of language attitudes that people within that country hold. Additionally, it will also show that the extent to which the results of studies conducted in the Western world are generalizable might be very limited and studies specific to each region must be conducted before big statements can be made. This project is also important because it is novel. It is the first attempt to examine attitudes between ex-colonial accents and regional accents within a country.

Words Cited:

Adegbija, Efurosibina. “Language Attitudes in West Africa.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, vol. 141, no. 1, 2000, doi:10.1515/ijsl.2000.141.75.

Álvarez-Mosquera, Pedro, and Alejandro Marín-Gutiérrez. “Implicit Language Attitudes Toward Historically White Accents in the South African Context.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, vol. 37, no. 2, 2017, pp. 238–248., doi:10.1177/0261927×17718349.

Girard, F., Floccia, C. & Goslin, J. (2008). Perception and awareness of accents in young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 26, 409–33.

Kamwangamalu, Nkonko, and Alla Tovares. “English in Language Ideologies, Attitudes, and Educational Practices in Kenya and South Africa.” World Englishes, vol. 35, no. 3, 2016, pp. 421–439., doi:10.1111/weng.12207.

Kinzler, K. D., Dupoux, E. & Spelke, E. S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, 12577–80.

Kinzler, K. D., Shutts, K., DeJesus, J., & Spelke, E. S. (2009). Accent trumps race in guiding children’s social preferences. Social cognition, 27(4), 623-634.

Wagner, L., Clopper, C. G., & Pate, J. K. (2014). Children’s perception of dialect variation. Journal of child language, 41(5), 1062-1084.

Connor Lane

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Have you ever gone back to watch old shows and movies and realized how blatant the stereotypes are? Even in kids’ movies, there are countless examples of racism and sexism that are appalling by today’s standards. From the way Native Americans are portrayed as savages in Peter Pan to the passivity and lack of meaningful characterization of traditional Disney princesses such as Aurora (from Sleeping Beauty) and Cinderella, it is important to understand problems in traditional narratives that we can improve upon in modern storytelling.

But when you hear about problematic stereotypes, how often is the discussion around language? The way accents and dialects are treated tends to fly under the radar, and there’s no reason why it should. Consistently using southern accents to mark stupidity or Russian accents to mark villainous intent is still a form of harmful stereotyping. It shouldn’t be surprising that these language biases are also present in children’s media. In an analysis including dozens of Disney films, for example, foreign accents tend to be associated with villains (Lippi-Green, 2012). And Disney movies are not alone, as the trend of villains using non-American accents holds true for animated TV shows (Dobrow & Gidney, 1998). The point here is not to stir up more fear about how the media is corrupting us, but instead to acknowledge harmful ideas and think about how to move forward. If you don’t want your kids internalizing stereotypes about women and people of color from these movies and shows, we should pay attention to other stereotypes such as language as well.

Which means we need more research on how other forms of media such as video games represent language. Old Disney movies and pre-2000s TV shows are less relevant nowadays, and if you have kids you’ll know how popular video games are today. Yet most of the work with language and video games seeks to understand if video games can be a viable tool for improving language skills (Chen & Yang, 2013; Sobhani & Bagheri, 2014; Rankin, Gold, & Gooch, 2016), which is a worthwhile topic of study but doesn’t answer the question of how video games represent language. In this, popular news does a better job than scientific studies at establishing the basis of language stereotypes in video games, such as pointing out that non-American accents represent an “exotic” character in Final Fantasy XII, and that in Starcraft uses southern US accents to represent units that are unrefined and weak in battle (Brice, 2011). While these articles lead the discussion on language stereotypes in video games, they are not scientific in the way that academic studies about accents in movies and TV have been. If we are going to be rightly appalled at the racism and sexism present in older shows and movies, we should see how much harmful stereotypes are present in video games as well, and language representation is an avenue that we have yet to explore.

Works Cited:

Lippi-Green, Rosina. English with an Accent. Routledge, 2012.

Dobrow, J., & Gidney, C. (1998). The Good, the Bad, and the Foreign: The Use of Dialect in Children’s Animated Television. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 557(1), 105-119.

Chen, H. J. H., & Yang, T. Y. C. (2013). The impact of adventure video games on foreign language learning and the perceptions of learners. Interactive learning environments, 21(2), 129-141.

Sobhani, M., & Bagheri, M. S. (2014). Attitudes toward the Effectiveness of Communicative and Educational Language Games and Fun Activities in Teaching and Learning English. Theory & Practice in Language Studies, 4(5).

Rankin, Y. A., Gold, R., & Gooch, B. (2006, September). 3D role-playing games as language learning tools. In Eurographics (Education Papers) (pp. 33-38).

Brice, Mattie. (2011). Speaking in Accents and the American Ethnocentrism in Video Games. Pop Matters. https://www.popmatters.com/151275-speaking-in-accents-and-the-american-ethnocentrism-in-video-games-2495918135.html