Linguistics Unscripted: Episode 2

Welcome to my second episode of Linguistic Unscripted where I go off script and discuss topics from my posts that didn’t quite fit on the page. Today, we’re talking about accents.

I talk about my experiences in my phonetics and phonology classes, why I love accents and a defining moment in my teaching career teaching accent reduction at call centres in Sri Lanka.

We get into some interesting consonents in the phonemic chart (see below). Lori does a fantastic job at recording how some of these sounds come together (it’s way more complicated than you’d think) as well as how phonemes, intonation and word stress creates accents. Meow Factor by Edith is the real expert here as a dialectologist - I hope she will forgive me for my aging knowledge!

I use two of my favourite Bollywood actresses to explain how code switching works, how you’re often made to choose who you are depending on who you’re talking to - and how much criticism comes with it. Both beautiful, famous women, have been harassed and hounded online for their accents.

Speakers face the authenticity paradox: maintain your accent and risk professional marginalisation, or modify it and face accusations of inauthenticity, of abandoning your roots, of “talking white” or “putting on airs.” For many, there is no comfortable middle ground, only a series of calculated choices about which version of yourself to present in which context, knowing that each choice carries consequences for how you’re perceived both professionally and within your own community.

Videos about Priyanka Chopra’s accent in the media

Videos about Deepika Pudokone’s accent in the media

^^ Fahah Khan, the director for Deepika’s debut in Om Shanti Om explaing in an interview how she didn’t like Deepika’s south Indian accent and listened to her audition tape with the sound off because she was “disturbed” by her voice 😳

These complexities reveal that accent isn’t simply something speakers “have” - it’s something they perform, negotiate, and strategically deploy. The question isn’t whether people can or should change their accents. The question is why some accents require changing in the first place, and what it costs individuals to constantly navigate between linguistic authenticity and professional acceptance. The burden of adaptation falls disproportionately on those whose voices already carry less institutional power, creating yet another invisible tax on belonging.

With AI, there is a way for us to include identity and language and accents without appropriating or flattening language to reduce it to something that is “accessible” in some ways but aligned to the majority in its essence.

For me, language is about expressing yourself, in the ways you can preserve who you are, regardless of how you sound what you say and where youre from.

These two use cases show how accents are so fluid, misunderstood but above all - apart of who we are.

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