The project Counteracting accent dIscrimination pRactiCes in Education (CIRCE) intends to address the issue of accent discrimination in education. The school environment is a hotspot for addressing this issue: students are exposed to different accents and form and reinforce their attitudes and beliefs towards them also on the basis of peer pressure.  

Teachers are confronted daily with regional and non-native accents of the national language, and are at risk of unconsciously succumbing to prejudice and negative evaluations of non-standard language. The literature shows how these phenomena can occur even in people with high sensitivity to linguistic diversity and multilingualism, and are extremely risky because they can result in censorious and hypercritical attitudes toward students already at risk of dropping out and dropping out of school.

Project members:

Large team of researchers from several European institutions – among which Prof. Robert Fuchs is one of several PIs

Discrimination can occur on different axes and in various forms. In this regard, language appears to be one of the possible axes on which discrimination is experienced. Language can, in fact, be classified as a personal attribute, but at the same time, it may also say something about an individual’s ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. Discrimination related to linguistic issues is usually labelled linguicism (Skutnabb-Kangas2016). Mechanisms in language discrimination are subtle. Research has shown that discrimination on the basis of accent is widespread and tolerated and often operates below the level of consciousness (Gaertner, Dovidio, 2007). However, the consequences are often shattering, and linguistic discrimination may have direct consequences on the well-being of individuals in question. The new superdiversity of contemporary European societies requires European teachers to be better equipped with the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to prepare students for life in a dynamically changing society that is increasingly multicultural. Conscious and unconscious linguistic discrimination by teachers may lead to students from marginalised (linguistic) backgrounds being judged more negatively in their academic achievements. Specifically, teachers’ negative attitudes towards non-standard (accented) speech may often be based on the assumption that people with a non-standard accent are not proficient or sufficiently fluent in the language, regardless of their general linguistic competence, or that their non-standard accent is the consequence of a lack of willingness to master the standard language, especially perhaps in the case of speakers with an immigrant background (Boyd 2003). Normally, this circumstance leads pupils to feel less valued and discourages them from putting their effort into studying, which may, in the end, become a self-fulfilling prophecy (Gluszek, Dovidio 2010; Russo, Gazi, Koyuncu 2017).

Accent deprecation and discrimination further play an important role in the foreign language classroom, particularly, perhaps, in English language education. English (and other foreign) language curricula typically emphasise (inter-)cultural communicative competence as the overall underlying goal of teaching and learning. This curricular goal, however, often contrasts with a classroom reality where solely standard British and standard American English are held high in regard and other accents may be perceived as less proper, less correct, or less educated - to the extent that some may even be associated with strong stereotypes and negative social and cultural meanings (Bayard & Green, 2005; Carrie, 2017; Forsberg et al., 2019; Henderson et al., 2012; Hartmann, 2021; Hölscher & Meer, 2021; Kruse, 2016; Ladegaard & Sachdev, 2006; McKenzie & Gilmore, 2017; Meer, 2021; Meer et al., 2021a,b; Vettorel, 2018). Such attitudes not only show that the results of English language education in Europe frequently fall short of curricular expectations but may, at times, result in harmful beliefs.

Thus, it is critical for teachers and students to develop a tolerance for diversity, including in terms of accents, an area that has hitherto largely played a minor role (in any) in teacher training and retraining.

The objective of CIRCE is to expand teachers’ competencies, knowledge, and skills for inclusive appreciation of multiculturalism and multilingualism. 

This project is a collaboration of universities and research centres in Italy, Portugal, Bosnia Herzegovina and Germany. Prof. Fuchs is involved as PI of one of the two German partner institutions and the project is formally based at the University of Hamburg.

More information on the project is available at https://www.circe-project.eu/.