Does Accent Affect One’s Role in the Society?

Does accent affect one’s role in the society? Support your ideas with examples from real life. Have you ever told where you were coming from by a complete stranger right after you spoke? Well, despite the way we look or behave our ‘’accent’’ is the most indicative fact that gives us away. When people speak, everyone speaks with an accent. Accent is one of the signs to reflect a person’s background. Especially when we listen to someone speaking with a different accent, people can immediately recognize it and can even make prejudiced judgments about the speaker. This is when an individual’s accent plays its role in the society. Either they are positive or negative judgments; accent definitely has an effect to one’s role in the society. Since all the languages occurred within a different history, there happens to be a large set of accent from different kinds of language backgrounds. Even ‘’English’’ has variety of accents. Especially today, since the United States is a multicultural and multiracial country, accent has always been a complex issue in ones daily lives. This diversity of the ethnic and racial facts is attached with the differences based on the culture and more importantly the language. This language diversity appears in schools, workplaces and such places that take part in ones daily lives. ‘’The National Virtual Translation Center reports that in the United States, people speak in more than 311 different languages’’ (http://www.theolympian.com/646/story/). The important part about this fact is the effect of individuals’ accent on their lives. For example, when it comes hire a person into a job or to promotion decisions ‘’accent’’ can be a qualification for the organizations and such. The National Hispanic Corporate Council reports that ‘’people with a Hispanic accent often are considered less knowledgeable, incapable or uneducated, while people with a British accent are considered more intelligent.’’ (http://www.theolympian.com/646/story/).