What is this article about?

Western countries are receiving more and more immigrants. Also, the number of immigrants in the United States who are receiving or providing counselling and services in English is increasing. Some of them speak English with an accent. Recently, researchers have studied the effects of speech accents on clients’ perception on counsellors. Listeners use speech accents as immediate markers of someone’s character and background. This has its effect on behavior towards the speaker. Research has shown that speaker’s accents have an effect on the listener’s evaluation of speaker’s personality, social status, attractiveness and competence. Sometimes, accents can activate stereotypes and discriminatory behavior.

According to the Accent Prestige Theory (APT), accents can have an effect on status and solidarity dimensions. Status is related to things such as education, social class, intelligence and success of the speaker whereas solidarity is related to things such as kindness, trustworthiness and friendliness of the speaker. There has been a lot of research conducted on this topic. Most research shows that people with the ‘standard’ accent of their country are perceived as more prestigious than people with a foreign or regional accent. Higher status is assigned more often to people with a standard accent, even by people with a nonstandard accent. For solidarity, the results are different. Standard speakers give similar ratings of solidarity to standard and nonstandard speakers, but nonstandard speakers give higher solidarity rates to other nonstandard speakers.

What can be concluded?

So, speech accents are associated with social class and the effects of these accents differ in situations. In one study conducted in the United States, White and Black participants were asked to evaluate White middle-class accents, Black middle-class accents and ‘ghetto’ Black accents on a couple of personality traits. The results showed that Whites didn’t rate middle-class Whites and middle-class Blacks differently, but they did rate the ghetto Blacks lower on traits (such as kindness and character). Black participants didn’t differentiate between the three groups. So, it seemed that accents and social class are tied together and that people seem to make judgments based on someone’s class based on their accent.

Another study showed that people with similar accents automatically tend to believe that they hold similar views. This results in that people tend to agree more with people who have accents similar to their own.

Yet other studies showed that the context also has a big impact on accents. One study showed that people find it less ‘irritating’ when someone has a nonstandard accent in an informal setting. However, when it comes to formal settings (like in university), students are willing to drop the class if the teaching instructor is not a native speaker.

Research has also shown that gender and accents are also related. One study showed that Anglo Australian women evaluated Australian-accented speakers just slightly higher than Greek-accented speakers, whereas Australian men showed greater differences in their rating of two different kinds of speakers (and the higher rating for the Australian-accent speakers).

The communication accommodation theory shows that people adjust their accent and use of a language when speaking to someone with a different accent. This is probably with the goal to gain social approval or to build a bond. Research shows that this especially happens in formal settings and that women are better in accommodating compared to men.

Accents can also have an effect on comprehension and the recall of information. If someone’s accent is similar to your accent, you will probably remember things this person says better and you will also understand it better. Students will remember information better and understand it better when the teacher speaks in the same accent as they do. This is because of our limited cognitive resources. When you try to understand an accents that isn’t similar to yours, you pay more attention to unravelling this accent and that’s why you won’t have a lot resources to process what is actually being said.
Another study showed that people remembered news reports conveyed in a ‘normal’ or standard accent better than news reports conveyed in a regional accent. Listeners rated the standard speakers as more intelligent and that’s the reason why they paid more attention to them compared to regional-accented speakers. Also, because the listeners understood the normal-accented speakers better, they perceived them as more intelligent.

Accents may also elicit discrimination. Researchers found that discrimination that usually took place in formal settings, like school and work, was elicited by accents. In informal settings, like the grocery store, there was not a lot of discrimination because people didn’t spend much time there. Accents may also have its effect on hiring. When the job is of high-status, people will give higher ratings to normal-accented applicants. Jobs with low-statuses had a preference for foreign-accented applicants. Speech-accents may also impact the ability to obtain housing. Normal-accented speakers are more likely to obtain a house compared to foreign-accented speakers.

What is the impact of accents on counselling?

So, what kind of impact do accents have on counselling? As stated above, someone speaking in a nonstandard accent in a formal setting will probably be judged more negatively. This may result in a job counselling situation in which the counsellor provides the nonstandard accent speaker with a job of lower status, which does not always fit the capacity of the applicant. Researchers should study this in more detail, because we don’t have a lot of clear data on this topic. Also, another dimension that should be studied is whether accents impact diagnosis. One thing is for sure: clients should be free to express their thoughts in the way they want to. So, if counsellors are accepting of accents, the clients will feel more warmth and trust towards the counsellor. People express their pride and identity through their language and accent. Another thing that should be studied is the impact of a nonstandard-accent speaking counsellor. Clients who do speak in the standard-accent and have a nonstandard-accent speaking counsellor may downgrade him or her and not accept their expertise.