The BBC has said that Asian Americans are “less comprehensible” than white Americans.
According to a BBC article written by Melissa Hogenboom, Asian Americans are perceived has less comprehensible compared to their white American peers.
The article titled ‘How hard is it to fake and accent?’ delved into the question of how accents are perceived. “Our accent says a lot about our identity, but can also make us prone to stereotypes,” reads the article.
Hogenboom says that because of this, it is not uncommon for people to change their accents to become more accepted by society. However, Hogenboom says this is quite difficult for many of us. “Our accent forms a part of our identity,” she says. “To change it is to lose an aspect of ourselves.”
The author then goes on to say that changing your accents may not matter, depending on how others perceive you.
“Even if you successfully change your accent, if it doesn’t match with how other people perceive you, then there may be no point in changing it at all,” Hogenboom writes.
She then uses Asian Americans as an example. “One study showed that Asian Americans were judged as less comprehensible than white Americans despite the fact that they spoke with the same standard US accent,” Hogenboom writes.
The study that she refers to was first published in 1992 under the title ‘Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants’. Whether that data is still relevant to today’s standards was not explored.
