Regional Accent Discrimination in Hiring Decisions: A Language Attitude Study Page: 84
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Notice the dramatic difference from the whole group in the ratings of California
and Louisiana. California, the top rated speaker by the whole group, fell to 7th place in
the rankings of these four Texans. Louisiana rose from 7th place in the whole group's
rating to 5th place, which is especially interesting if we consider that the Louisiana
speaker was also from the South West Central Region (same as the Texas Speaker) and
was placed above both Alabama and Georgia, as well as above Chicago by these Texans.
These four respondents could not in any way be considered a significant group of people
on which to base any real analysis, but they certainly did seem to prefer their own accents
and the speakers who sounded most like them.
Next, I sorted all of the respondents based on where they had guessed a speaker to
be from, regardless of how accurate the guess was. I then took all the responses for those
speakers who were labeled as being specifically from Texas, minus all of the Texas
respondents. Non-Texans gave these responses when they thought they were judging a
Texas accent. The average for those scores was a 4.66. I then took all of the non-Texans
who had correctly identified the Texas speaker, and averaged their responses for the
Texas speaker. That average was 4.87, well below the overall average the Texan received
when the Texas responders were averaged into his score (4.99). Obviously, the four
linguistically secure Texans liked their own sound quite a bit more than the rest of the
respondents liked it.
It is also interesting to note that only four people out of the 56 said they would
change their accents, even if they could do so as if by magic, without cost or effort. Two84
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Markley, E. Dianne. Regional Accent Discrimination in Hiring Decisions: A Language Attitude Study, thesis, August 2000; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2623/m1/91/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .