1373: Discrimination from Accents Sep 14, 2018

Though generally not the most sinister, discrimination based on accent and or dialect is a large problem. Because there can to an association between race or ethnicity and manner of speaking, people transfer over negative views that they previously held, but because speech can be associated generally to gender, sexuality, age or class, the associations that lead to discrimination are inevitable. Moreover, it is a difficult issue to combat, as accents and dialects are hard to pin down in a specific way, and also because most of the reactions are involuntary, it is very difficult to prove on a case-by-case basis. Some people have proposed universal languages in the past to solve these types of problems, but as is evident with the increasing acceptance of English as the dominant global language, this could only ever go so far anyway.