Can we defeat linguistic discrimination? According to studies, it can take just 30 milliseconds of speech for listeners to build their first assumptions about the speaker. But bias about accents and dialects still runs deep.
Don’t be an accent snob warns top uni
Pride and prejudice: On Love Island (latest UK cast above) speakers with accents that are thought of as funny, friendly, and attractive (such as Welsh, Scottish and Newcastle accents) get off lightly — but the Liverpool accent is unpopular. Glossary
Acquitted - Declared innocent of a crime or of wrongdoing.
Sociolinguist - Relating to the study of how language is used by different groups in society, or how language is affected by social factors.
Consensus - General agreement. It was originally a Latin word.
Cognitive - Relating to the processes of thinking and reasoning.
Phonetician - An expert or student of phonetics, how humans produce or perceive sound.
Xenophobia - Literally 'fear of strangers' (in Greek), but the word is often used to refer to hatred or mistrust of foreigners as well as fear.