There is a debate in professional culture on whether or not we should encourage English speakers with non-standard accents to seek accent reduction. There are courses and speech coaches that teach workers how to neutralize their native
or regional accents. More recently, there has been new software developed that erases native accents on telephone calls for companies who outsource their customer service call centers from foreign countries.
Critics of this industry claim that the courses and software aim to whitewash their workers and force them to assimilate. However, defenders of accent reduction say that it has made their lives much easier and they have been able to advance in their careers.
There are two main ways accent reduction is implemented in the workplace. The first is Speech synthesizer software, which neutralizes the accent of the speaker as their voice is transmitted over the telephone. One example of this software is known as Sanas’ Speech Synthesizer, which two Stanford graduates founded.
In the ABC news article, Sze explains that the two were inspired to start the company after one “was fired from his call center job for speaking with an accent and being deemed poor at communicating with customers.”
The two also wanted to create the software to keep non-native English speakers abused by customers. Most American companies outsource their call centers to countries such as India and the Philippines. The founders realized “that much of call center workers’ abuse is either tied to customers’ bias against accented English speakers, their frustration that the call is taking too long, or their inability to understand the worker on the other end.”
The benefit of this software is that it does not require that workers train to neutralize their accents, and workers do not have to change anything about the way that they speak. On the other hand, accent reduction courses are classes that workers can take that teach them how to speak with a standard English-American accent.
Unlike the software, the course teaches its students a skill that they can use when talking face-to-face with other English speakers. According to CCLS Houston, who hosts an accent reduction course for non-native speakers, claims that the benefits of taking the course are that you “Stop having to repeat yourself, open up career improvement opportunities, perform better in school, and stop being too embarrassed to speak publicly.” I asked a former classmate, who now attends the University of South Carolina, what they thought about the accent reduction courses. They replied that they were “considering taking one of the workshop classes offered at USC because [they thought] it would help [them] get a better job.”
The company, like many others, also claims that its goal is not to eradicate accents, but to simply teach people how to communicate in a professional setting. This of course usually entails teaching them how to mask their accent.
However, critics claim that both courses and language synthesizers are feeding into the problem. Ritu Bhasin, author of “The Authenticity Concept,” stated, “It horrifies me that corporations would practice other folks to anglicize their accent — that is an instantaneous reinforcement of … racism.”
The courses that teach accent reduction do not question why hiding a non-native accent improves career performance. According to a study by Jessica Spence, there is an idea that companies will not hire someone because their accent inhibits their communication skills, however, she found that job interviewers’ “ratings of each candidate’s comprehensibility (defined as how easy they were to understand) were not related to hiring decisions.”
Spence explains that her studies did find that interviewers judged based off of their candidate’s perceived social status. The study found that “candidates who spoke with non-standard accents were rated as less competent and less intelligent than candidates who spoke with standard accents.”
By encouraging people to adopt the standard English accent for career success, we are essentially telling non-native speakers that their accent is not good enough for the professional world in Western society. I do believe that we should help people who want to learn English understand the American accent and help them be more secure in using their second language.
However, I believe that by encouraging non-native speakers to take accent reduction courses or by erasing their accent over the phone, we are reinforcing negative stereotypes about non-native speakers and promoting assimilation. Even if they claim that they do not want to erase their culture, accent reduction courses are still shunning people for their uncommon cultural identity in the workplace. I asked my roommate what her thoughts were on accent reduction, and she replied, “I feel like people are bullied into changing their accents by society. Maybe people with no accents should try harder to understand everyone else.”
I believe the accent reduction industry has good intentions. It aims to help foreign English speakers become more secure in speaking with their colleagues, and help them have more success in the workplace. However, the industry fails to acknowledge the underlying societal issues that cause them to seek help in the first place. As a society, we need to stop ridiculing people who don’t speak like us, and we need to support those who take on the challenge of learning a second language.