"When it comes to languages, I really, really don't like the stress of getting the grammar perfect. I would rather you fumble your words. I would rather you called me he over she, but you said your sentence. Over... not speak at all."
Episode Overview
This episode delves into the profound connections between language, communication, and culture, highlighting the importance of moving beyond grammatical perfection to prioritize meaningful interaction. Our guest, Felly, shares her journey as a bilingual child in Canada, her experiences working and traveling across Australia, Asia, and Mexico, and her current life as an expat in semi-rural France. The conversation explores stereotypes tied to “English knowledge” and “accents” and emphasizes how language shapes social identity and inclusion. It also uncovers the complexities of navigating linguistic and cultural differences in everyday societies.
This is the first in a number of guest episodes this season meant to feature individuals outside the language and communication industry, who unequivocally grasp the complexities of multilingual/multicultural human interaction through their lived experiences. We hope that by listening, you will be challenged to rethink assumptions about “standard” language and work to embrace a more inclusive approach to communication.
Actionable Advice
For Language Learners:
Embrace mistakes as part of the learning process.
Practice speaking in real-world situations rather than focusing solely on textbook grammar.For Employers and HR Professionals:
Implement bias training to ensure fair treatment of candidates regardless of their accents.For Everyone:
Be mindful of how you react to different accents and strive to listen with empathy.
Related Resources
Below, you'll find a few links tied to the topics we discuss in this episode. WeCultivate does not unequivocally endorse the material or its creators beyond a cursory review of the material presented. They have been shared here to encourage further exploration and independent learning. This is a dynamic list and subject to updates as time goes on. If any of the links become broken, or if you have a suggestion for the list, please let us know. Thanks!
Accent Discrimination & Historical Ties to Classism:
Article: The regional accentism that secretly affects job prospects (BBC)
"Judgements around regional accents can impact candidates’ hireability and pay. Is there a way to end this discrimination?"Article: The pervasive problem of 'linguistic racism' (BBC)
"Not everyone who speaks English is treated the same way. What happens when accent discrimination creeps in to our conscious and unconscious – and what do we do about our biases?"Academic publication: Hear, hear! A review of accent discrimination at work (I. Hideg, W. Shen & C.Z. Koval, 2024)
"Research on diversity in organizations has mostly focused on attributes that rely on visual cues (e.g., gender, race, age) and overlooked an important source of difference that relies on auditory cues – accents. We first review prior accent research suggesting that these negative effects can be explained by stereotypes/stigmatization or lower processing fluency. We then identify three emerging topic areas and suggest future research directions in each domain: intersectionality, organizational language policies and practices, and investigation of a greater range of accents and languages."Blog post: Accent Discrimination: Drawing Attention to An Invisible Minority (S. Dream, Association for Academic Surgery)
"Despite these laws, accent discrimination still happens, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission allows employers to determine if an accent will interfere with an employee’s ability to effectively communicate in a manner that allows them to fulfill the functions of their job."Book/PDF: Advocating for Sociolinguistic Justice in the United States (M.F.R. Pellicia, P. MacGregor-Mendoza, M. Niño-Murcia)
"This collection focuses on social awareness and critical language awareness with the goal of enlightening and empowering multilingual and multicultural communities across the U.S. Each chapter brings to light the trauma, gaps in services and misguided societal perceptions that adversely impact communities whose linguistic and cultural background and/or status as migrants place them in vulnerable situations."Article: The rise of ‘accent softening’: why more and more people are changing their voices (The Guardian)
"Elocution lessons are back in vogue, with many people seeking to disguise their regional accents. But shouldn’t we be beyond this now?"Article: Bias against working-class and regional accents has not gone away, report finds (The Guardian)
"Researchers found not much has changed since 1969, with many saying their accents had been mocked or criticised at work"Interview: ‘We still make judgments from the way people talk’: Rob Drummond decodes accent prejudice (The Guardian)
"As a new book explores stereotypes that are socialised into us, 11 readers also reflect on the way they speak"Book: You're All Talk (R. Drummond)
"Why do we have different accents and where do they come from? Why do you say ‘tomayto’ and I say ‘tomahto’? And is one way of speaking better than another?In You’re All Talk , linguist Rob Drummond explores the enormous diversity in our spoken language to reveal extraordinary insights into how humans how we perceive (and judge) other people and how we would like ourselves to be perceived."
The Diversity of French Accents, The "Academie" Governing the French Language, & Other Links Mentioned in the Episode
TedxTalk: La faute de l'orthographe / The Spelling Mistake (in French but translated to English via subtitles) - HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
A humorous and historically accurate overview about the development of the (modern) French language; presented by two linguists hoping to educate the world on the fact that the French language was INTENTIONALLY created to be confusing, as a way of exercising class powers.Blog Post: The Ultimate Guide to French Regional Accents (Talk in French)
"If you have ever traveled in France outside of Paris or watched a movie set in province, you might have noticed that a lot of French speakers do not quite sound like what you are used to. France is home to dozens of different regional accents, each linked to the culture and history of the area they originate from."Info: L'Académie Française (Wikipedia)
"The Académie Française, also known as the French Academy, is the principal French council for matters pertaining to the French language...The Académie comprises forty members, known as les immortels ("the immortals")...The Académie is France's official authority on the usages, vocabulary, and grammar of the French language...As the use of English terms by media increased over the years, the Académie has tried to prevent the Anglicization of the French language...The Académie Française intervened in June 2008 to oppose the French Government's proposal to constitutionally offer recognition and protection to regional languages (Flemish, Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Occitan, Gascon, and Arpitan)."Article: Protecting or persecuting the French language? The unpleasant underbelly of France’s linguistic watchdog, L’académie française (The Cambridge Language Collective)
"The self-professed, principal function of the Académie is to ‘maintain and preserve the purity of the French language’ — a mission statement possessing of a surreptitious hostility. The process of ‘preservation’ necessitates near-clinical conditions; items must be kept airtight, hermetically sealed. Preservation is not simply an act of protection or maintenance, but rather one of enforced stagnancy. Applying such a constrictive principle to language —an entity that is perpetually evolving—thus renders the Académie’s mission oppressive, near despotic. Attempting to maintain the version of the French language that was standardised in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in today’s modern, globalised, multicultural landscape is entirely unnatural, and can only be achieved by the kind of linguistic authoritarianism that the Académie proliferates."IG Account: Oh my Lot! (a.k.a. Lot Tourisme) – mentioned in the episode
[Felly: "So I don't live in a city. I live in the middle of nowhere in the Lot Valley...I saw an article that they were coming for the Lot department because they use a lot of “Englishisms,” which obviously the French Association is not okay with, but the tourism department here is called “Oh My Lot”. And the French Association is like, that's an English system. It's not French. You need to change it to “Lot Tourisme”, or whatever."]Article: Linguistic terror (Nevada Today)
"In 1794, the darkest period of the French Republic, it was decreed by law that no other language than French could be spoken. Not speaking French was considered a “counterrevolutionary” behavior...In April 2021, the French Assembly approved a bill allowing primary schools to teach the majority of school subjects “in a regional language” and the rest in French. But the minister of education appealed the bill, arguing that the so-called “immersive teaching” won’t allow children to reach the appropriate skills in French. Accordingly, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that teaching in “minority languages” such as Basque, Breton, Catalan and Corsican, is “unconstitutional”."Blog Post: French Speaking Countries of the World (The French Class)
"The French language is the official language in 29 countries across several continents including Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North America."
The Beauty & Necessity of Imperfection in Language
Article: Why Making Mistakes Is The Best Way To Learn A Language (Babbel)
"Instead of shying away from failure, here’s why you should embrace those little errors...Researchers have found that if we make mistakes, we’ll learn from them and are less likely to make them the next time around. Bottom line: making mistakes is the best way to learn a language because it’s the best way to learn, period."Article: Secrets of learning a language — quickly (BBC)
"Picture this: You want to apply for a dream assignment abroad. There’s just one problem. You need foreign language skills that you don't have — and time is not on your side."
Bonus: for those who want to see a scientific paper recently published in "Frontiers in Psychology"
Academic Paper: Toward characterization of perceptual specialization for faces in Multiracial contexts (C.B. Pickron & E. Kutlu, 2024)
"Crucially, we focus on the intersection of race and language and argue that there are opportunities for furthering the current tools and theories toward inclusive practices and characterization of experiences in these domains. Particularly, the experience of Multiracial development which has received limited attention in the development of perceptual expertise, will be explored and discussed in this paper."