I have a foreign accent. So what?!
Photo by Aiony Haust on Unsplash
Foreign accents have always been a point of contention in Saint Lucia, especially if you’re Black. Either you’re one of us or you’re pretending to be one of them.
It was always something that confused me when I was younger. I remember having classmates who mocked British-born dark-skinned girls because how could one be dark-skinned and British? It just didn’t make any sense to our underdeveloped brains.
If you’re Black, your accent had to be Saint Lucian. Otherwise, you’re just pretending to be...I’m not quite sure what. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in the UK because once you’ve touched Saint Lucian soil, you had to sound “Lucian”. (Whatever that means!)
We all know that no two segments of any population sound the same; not even on an island which is as small as mine!
On the other hand, the lines were not so clear-cut for white, white-passing or mixed-race British-born girls. If you fell under one of these categories, you could play up your accent as much as you wanted because you fit the mould of what a “true” British person should look like: white.
I always found it so funny how these rules applied to one but not the other, even though they were both born and raised in the same country: England.
I remember asking a classmate just before my music class why she was so angry that Lisa (not her real name), a dark-skinned British girl, spoke with an English accent.
She responded, “But the girl living here for so long and still talking like dat [sic]? Why she pretending?”
I asked her if it made her equally upset when Monica (not her real name) – a white Brit whose family moved here before Lisa’s – still spoke with her accent?
She quickly responded with “No!” because to her it clearly wasn’t the same thing.
But why wasn’t it? Why should Lisa have picked up a Saint Lucian accent by now but not Monica?
Understandably, she found my line of questioning quite annoying. So, she promptly ended our encounter by waving me off and heading in the direction of the tuck shop to avoid any semblance of self-reflection. (I assume, of course.)
At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain her innate disdain for Lisa’s complete refusal to reject her linguistic identity but recently my friend, Selma Sardouk, told me that in France, this phenomenon is referred to as “glottophobia”.
The term ‘glottophobia’ was popularised by Philippe Blanchet, sociologist and Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Rennes-2. It refers to discrimination based on one’s pronunciation, tone and language ability, especially when it comes to access to a right or a resource, such as a job (Dadiani, 2020).
You may be wondering why I had such deep feelings towards this issue at the age of 15. Well, to be honest, it was because I was often mocked about my lack of a “true” Saint Lucian accent when growing up.
I was often told that I was “putting on an accent” and “yanking” i.e. trying to sound American (a place where I’ve never lived) just because I found an absurd amount of joy in enunciating my words.
Even at UWI, I was told by my compatriots that I didn’t sound like a “rell [sic] Lucian”. Ironically, as soon as I opened my mouth in class, classmates of other nationalities would automatically say, “your Saint Lucian accent is so strong!” And then go on and on about how they loved our accents and how different it was from theirs. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, “y’all sound like Francophone Africans trying to speak English”. Make of that remark what you will!
Now, living in France, no one knows or even understands where I’m from. Some automatically realise that I’m Anglophone. Others think that I’m just from some Overseas French Department, which they would never be able to locate on a map. Because why else would I be able to speak their language fluently?!
To the French, I’m just that girl with an exotic accent. At times, I wonder if it’s my accent that’s exotic or the way that I look. (But, I think we all know the answer to that.)
Admittedly, I don’t really care that much anymore about covering my accent because 1) it takes too much effort and 2) I’ve always been proud of my Saint Lucian accent.
Since the start of my language-learning journey, I’ve prioritised effective communication over perfecting an accent, even though I’m well aware of the barriers that is has placed on my upward social mobility (Donnelly, Baratta, & Gamsu, 2019).
If I were to adopt a posh French accent, I’d be forcing myself to deny an aspect of my cultural identity; much like the girls at school who would never feel natural expressing themselves with a Saint Lucian accent because they are irrefutably British – no matter what their skin colour led close-minded individuals to believe.
Sometimes, I wonder about these girls and how that secondary school experience in Saint Lucia must have impacted the rest of their lives, as well as their relationship to the birthplace of either their parents or their grandparents.
Identity is something that I think about often. It’s not something that I struggle with because I have a good sense of who I am and what I believe in.
However, working in diversity and inclusion has forced me to explore what identity means to different groups of people and how others’ perception of them has either negatively or positively affected their respective journeys.
So, as I reflect on these dark-skinned British girls who were bullied as a result of their accents, I wonder about how they perceive foreigners who move to the UK and whether or not they think that they too should switch accents to fit in as they were told to do on a small island their parents dragged them to all these years ago.
I may never understand the thought process of someone who feels that their cultural identity is being directly threatened due to the arrival of immigrants, and I hope that I never do since that would force me to be what I despise most in the world: xenophobic.
As cited in Philippas (2014), “xenophobia is the excessive fear, dislike, and even hostility toward anything “foreign” or to anything and anybody from outside one’s own social group, nation, or country (Hjerm, 1998, 2009; McEvoy, 1995; Orenstein, 1985).”
So before you criticise someone for speaking your language with a foreign accent, ask yourself if you would be brave enough to leave everything you’ve ever known in the hope that it would lead to something better.
Sources
Dadiani, T. (2020, June 20). Entretien. Apprendre le français, pourquoi est-ce que ça paraît si compliqué? Retrieved April 06, 2021, from https://rennes.maville.com/actu/actudet_-entretien.-apprendre-le-francais-pourquoi-est-ce-que-ca-parait-si-complique-_54135-4141124_actu.Htm
Donnelly, M., Baratta, A., & Gamsu, S. (2019). A sociolinguistic perspective on accent and social mobility in the UK teaching profession. Sociological Research Online, 24(4), 496-513. doi:10.1177/1360780418816335
Hjerm, M. (1998). Reconstructing ‘positive’ nationalism: Evidence from Norway and Sweden. Sociological Research Online, 3(2). Retrieved from http://www.socresonline.org.uk/socresonline/3/2/7.html
McEvoy, J. Ch. (1995). A consideration of the sociobiological dimensions of human xenophobia and ethnocentrism. Retrieved from http://www.pscw.uva.nl/sociosite/TOPICS/xenophobia.html
Orenstein, D. M. (1985). The sociological quest: Principles of sociology. St. Paul, NY: West Publishing Company. (Report). Vienna: Institute for Advanced Studies.
Philippas D. (2014) Xenophobia. In: Michalos A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_3296