| I should RTFNews but I bet they didn’t test for class. And did they test vernacular vs accent? Many times in a work situation it is alternate grammar and vocabulary rather than accent that is taken to be unprofessional. Did they track the difference in geo background of the employee and the wage-setter? Since this seems clickbaity I’ll guess the news piece wants to drum up an inter-regional anger when the offenders are probably intra-. Personally I love all regional accents. I am drawn to Chris Arnade’s lessons in Dignity, where he remarks that class can be tracked partially by willingness and opportunity to leave one’s hometown to pursue wealth. To my ear, having a regional accent tells me that a person managed to mitigate that and I think it is cool. I code-switched my very sharp Boston accent down when I got to college in the midwest. Two reasons. There are many accents and vernaculars from any single region including Appalachia that denote class. Mine let people know I came from a line of laborers, teamsters, mechanics. So, first reason: My accent infuriated a professor I had who came from New England but had a plummier more “Boston Brahmin” line. I know that cost me by the way he openly mocked me in class. I did not use vernacular in class - I did not use “wicked” as a positive adjective or anything like that. That was pure distain for my home - like he got mugged on the subway once by my cohort. The second reason was that a lot of my new friends were from Nebraska and Wisconsin and they actually could not understand what I was saying at times. It became something I would have to actively cultivate to keep as I repeated myself with more Rs and -ing suffixes to make myself understood. They loved the vernacular bit and actually had fondness for the accent but the force was strong. In the end I came out a little more like Arnade’s truth. I would go home and people could tell that something changed. Anyway I hope that bias. am be removed from wage-setting. Unions are good for that. Salary setting is different and I hope that bias can be overcome, and no matter the quality of TFA maybe the salary setters here can take it as a reminder. |