Accent Monitoring: Innovation Or Rights Violation? 448
theodp writes "After almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers' articulation, the NY Times' Marc Lacey reports that a federal investigation of possible civil rights violations has prompted Arizona to call off its accent police. The teachers who were found to have strong accents were not fired, but their school districts were required to work with them to improve their speech. Interestingly, one person's civil rights violation is another's 'wonderful little phenomenon', which is how PBS described the accent neutralization classes attended by Bangalore call center workers who worked for the likes of IBM and Microsoft. On its website, IBM Daksh notes that 'To make sure that customers all over the world can understand the way our people speak, every new hire is trained in what we call voice and accent neutralization.' So, is accent monitoring and neutralization a civil right violation, as the U.S. Depts. of Justice and Education suggest, or is it an 'innovation', as IBM argues?"
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
From My Cousin Vinny [imdb.com]
Vinny Gambini: It is possible that the two yutes...
Judge Chamberlain Haller: ...Ah, the two what? Uh... uh, what was that word?
Vinny Gambini: Uh... what word?
Judge Chamberlain Haller: Two what?
Vinny Gambini: What?
Judge Chamberlain Haller: Uh... did you say 'yutes'?
Vinny Gambini: Yeah, two yutes.
Judge Chamberlain Haller: What is a yute?
Vinny Gambini: [beat] Oh, excuse me, your honor...
[exaggerated]
Vinny Gambini: Two YOUTHS.
Re:Context (Score:3, Informative)
I am pretty sure that when used by the state in Arizona, this amounted to selective cultural bias and harassment.
So, in short, what you're doing here is assigning beliefs to a group of people based simply on where they live. I think there's a word for that, but I just can't put my figure on it.
Re:Context (Score:4, Informative)
It's one thing to be able to reproduce the correct sound when one is laser focused on replicating the sound and quite another to be able to create the sounds properly whilst handling the other aspects of effective communication.
Some individuals will have an accent as a result of not being able to hear or reproduce the sounds necessary to have a native like accent. But more commonly people will only be able to create the correct sound with great effort and will have to make other trade offs for it to happen.
There is a minority of people out there that have an especially good ear for accents and more control over the muscles necessary to create the sounds, but they are very much in the minority and most folks just can't maintain it for long periods of time.
I don't think it's been established completely the reason why some people can and others can't, one of the suggestions I've seen is that it's related to mirror neurons and empathy, but I don't believe that's at a point where we can say conclusively that is the case. But, whatever the means, the reality is that it's highly unlikely to involve the same pathway that one uses for other aspects of verbal communication.
Re:Grammar Police (Score:2, Informative)
It's a bit cheeky coming from someone that uses a colloquial meaning of 'practically' (as he is clearly not functionally illiterate) and the same again for 'retarded' - so well done, you can spell, but your vocabulary is a stunted mess. Not to mention, you have no idea how he 'looks', only how he appears to you.
I'll leave the 'missing u' alone, as those from the US truly seem to believe they have it correct - even when it results in them losing words because of it (amour and armor is a lost distinction on you I assume?).