Social Evaluations of Accented Englishes: The Indian Context and its Ideologies
Abstract
Research in the field of language attitudes and ideologies and social perceptions has evidenced the associations between a speaker’s accent and a listener’s perceptions of various aspects of their identity. Here, intelligence, socio-economic background, race, region of origin, friendliness, and so forth are integral in understanding the context. This ‘profiling’ can at times results in discrimination and issues faced in various social institutions where verbal communication is of great importance, such as education environments, or even during employee recruitment.
This study employs a mixed-methods approach, employing a sequential explanatory design to investigate the social evaluation process of native and non-native accents on status and solidarity parameters by individuals from a multicultural community in Pune, India. The findings are consistent with research in the field of language ideologies, demonstrating preference for Indian and Western accents as compared to other Asian accents. An extensive ethnography revealed factors such as education, colonial history, globalization and media consumption to be key in influencing these evaluations and ideologies. The themes are explored in the context of the socio-economic history of the English language in India.
Keywords: Accent, social evaluation, language ideologies and attitudes, globalization, linguistic anthropology