Let's Find Common Ground - How Our Accents Can Divide and Unite Us

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

We all judge others on how they sound: their accent, their pronunciation, their use of slang. Some of us have been criticized for these things ourselves, mocked because we sound different from those around us. The way we speak can be a source of division. But it doesn’t have to be. In this episode we speak with Jessica Mendoza and Jingnan Peng of the Christian Science Monitor. They host the Monitor’s new podcast Say That Again?, which explores how we sound, how we listen, and how we can come to better understand each other.   Both hosts and guests on this show were once newcomers to the US. We hear some personal stories of how their own voices have affected their experience, and how listening differently can help us all find common ground.

Have you ever judged anyone on how they sound, their accent, their pronunciation, their use of slang? Or maybe you've been on the other end of that. Someone has looked down on you because you don't sound like them. Yes, to both questions. It's not just what we say that can lead to misunderstandings and division. It's how we say it. understandings and division, it's how we say it. This is Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard Davies. And I'm Ashling Naltight. I'll guess this week a journalist, Jessica Mendoza and Jing Nan Peng of the Christian Science Monitor. They're the hosts of a new podcast called Save That Again about how we sound, how we

listen, and how we can all come to better understand each other. An accent is also about identity. The four of us know this firsthand because we've all been newcomers to the US, and we share some personal stories in this episode. Actually, kicks off our interview. Can you tell us a little bit about your own experience with Accentral, I say, which you've both had since moving to the US, Jing, maybe we can start with you? So I grew up in Beijing until the age of 18. And then I came to the US

in 2011 for college and then for work and so the past 10 years I've pretty much been living in pronounced non-American accent, but because my English does not have a obvious foreign sound, I think that has definitely helped me integrate and perhaps be treated as, you know, more competent and intelligent and to not have a lot of those times when people become annoyed at me or impatient at me because they can't understand me. Well, Jess, what about you? I think to many people, they just assume that you were born and raised in the US. Yeah.

So I grew up in the Philippines, have been speaking English. Basically my whole life, I don't actually recall learning the language, but I think really what it is, I started my career in broadcasting. I was a radio DJ and had covered sports as well in the Philippines. And the radio in particular, it was an English language

radio station in Manila. Even before then, I had already been sort of aware of wanting to speak English in a particular way to be perceived in a particular way. And so I think going into radio then made me even more conscious about how I spoke and how eloquent I seem to other people. And so that's sort of been a running,

undercurrent thought for me, all my life, and of course coming to the States and then going to grad school here and trying to fit in, like that continued to be a theme. And so when the opportunity came to sort of do a podcast to kind of really try to understand what that means to me and to other people sort of jumped at the chance. Well, yeah, Richard, talking of Fishing in, you have your own story, right, of accents and Fishing in in the U.S.? Yeah, I'm the child of British parents, one Welsh, one English.

My own story was that I had to shed my English accent, which I had when I lived in the UK with my parents for 20 years, and in order to get a job in the US in commercial radio, I had to sound American. And it took a lot of work. And I was kind of insecure. I felt like people would think that I was out of touch if I was English. And it was only later that I discovered that a lot of people think in English accent it's kind of classy and gives you a certain gravitas that perhaps you wouldn't have without it.

Yeah, which is so interesting because when I came here much later but I went to work in public radio. And I was a little bit concerned about my accent, but I worked for a show that was sort of global and outlook, and they didn't have a problem with it at all. They would tell me that I had to pronounce certain words the American way, right? There's a different emphasis on certain words, and I would be corrected on various pronunciations, but in general, I have felt that since living in this country, I'm one of those people who gets mistaken for being more intelligent than I am because of my accent.

You know, that's a comment that people with received pronunciation English accents will often get. So on the whole, I would say it's helped me although I have had the Experience of people having to ask me to repeat myself because they really don't understand what I'm saying I remember coming off an ABC newscast and the newsroom being in Mark outrage that I'd said Debrae which is the English pronunciation of Debris.

And it took many years to shed some of these strange pronunciations. Many people will never entirely shed their accent all the way they pronounce things. Still, as far as the four of us know, none of us have actually lost out on a job because of our accents. But Jess and Jing talked to someone who has for their podcast. His name is Dominic and he's originally from Ghana. Here's a clip from episode three of Say That Again, where we hear from Jing, Dominic and Jess. Dominic was interviewing for a job as a training manager. I was going in as someone with a training background.

I've already played that role a little bit with another organization. I've already gotten a master's degree in training and development. The HR manager called me the next day to share with me that I had a really good qualifications and experience that they would have loved to have. But it was because of my absence that they were worried.

People who I will be training me not to be able to understand me or may not be able to. In short, Dominic did not get the job. Dominic didn't push back. He let the job go, but as Jing tells us, that wasn't the end of the story. So he worked with a communication coach. And I think what was interesting to me about that is that he has come away with, you know,

not with sort of a shame in his accent. He has come to an understanding that, in a way, the accent is a mark of his life experience. All the languages that he has learned growing up in Ghana and sort of now approaching a new language, you know, some of the sounds from your old language comes through, he sees that, you know, it's a part of who he is and his background. But on the other hand, he has gotten all these tools to facilitate communication. Dominic learned a lot from that communication coach. Here he is again, telling Jing and Jess how those communication tools influenced him.

Often times when I'm expressing myself, I acknowledge that I haven't asked. And that there could be a chance that you may miss one or 12 of my words. So if you do, please don't be ashamed to let me know and I'll be happy to go over it with you. And so I always put the upfront to give the listener more confidence to ask question if they were hesitant to do that. I think what was so, I thought rather moving about that statement, he was willing to find common ground with them.

It was a two-way street. Yeah, and I think that was a big message out of that episode that we were both sort of hoping to get, but at the same time we're still like pleasantly surprised, but by how sort of meaningfully it had emerged, it just in talking to Dominic and to some of the other people who were featured in that episode, he was genuinely trying to embody that, not just expecting people to listen to him better, but he was genuinely wanting to engage with the people that he was having conversations with to say,

like, I know that I sound different than what you normally are probably used to. So I want to work with you to help you understand me because I would like this sort of discussion to move forward. And I think there's a lot of there's a lot to take away from that that I think I'm personally still processing a little bit. What is really going on when we are getting uhked and annoyed by somebody's accent, we're getting impatient. We think, oh, why do I have to struggle to understand this person?

What's really happening? One of our sources cited a study where people were asked to interact with someone who's first language is Korean and is speaking English with a Korean accent. They're supposed to communicate about a complicated game. And what they find is that there's a group of people who have shown some bias towards Korean people. And compared to the other group that not shown that bias, the group that has shown bias had a much harder

time communicating with this person and that communication broke down. They weren't asking follow-up questions. And so I think sometimes that there might be certain implicit bias or attitudes inside you that already make you not want to communicate. So one way to overcome bias is curiosity is wanting to understand someone who may come from a culture that's very different from your own? Absolutely, it's so much of a desatitude. And just to disclaimer, neither of us are psychologists or sociologists. And so definitely look into that research more. But yeah, I think that irked feeling that Ashley was referring to.

It touches on a lot of intersections about our own human psychology. It's implicit biases for sure. It's also kind of this expectation of what an interaction is supposed to be. Is it a customer service situation that you're in and you are not understand? You're already coming in a little bit like, Peeve, nobody calls customer service because they're having a great time. And so you're coming in with all of the feelings and emotions and expectations in any interaction

versus like if you are at a summer camp and you're trying to befriend people and you want to be part of the group and somebody has an accent you're not familiar with, you're probably gonna be a little bit more open to hearing them talk. And so I think it really depends on the interaction, it depends on what you bring,

what you're willing to receive in turn. I'm really glad you mentioned that customer service. Mm-hmm, scenario. Because I was planning to admit this here on the podcast that often when I call, let's say my bank's 1-800 number, I am speaking to somebody thousands of miles away. The phone line is poor, and I do sometimes have trouble understanding their accent and I'm annoyed to begin with as you pointed out because

that's why I'm calling them. So how can we be better people about that? How can we find commonality with the customer service rep who gets such abuse, frankly, from customers? who gets such abuse, frankly, from customers. I mean, what you said just like that initial empathy. Yeah, it's like, you know, the person that you're speaking to on the phone, they might have spent years trying to get to the point where they are, you know, in terms of communicating clearly. There's all that effort. Well, on the other hand, maybe let's say if you grew up just speaking

English, you like, in a way you never made any effort, right? Or, you know, to sound the way you sound. Right. And I think like, you know, in a realistic sense, like you're probably not going to like call your customers or your credit card company and be like, okay, now today I'm going to be my extra empathetic. Like you're, you have other things you're thinking about and that's totally fine and normal, I think. It's just, yeah, I think something that I've felt more after having reported this podcast is just a small check

in my brain, just being like, okay, am I not understanding this person or am I just like annoyed for some other reason? Are they truly being unhelpful or am I like projecting that because I'm feeling frustrated? And that might just be a very small, quick moment. helpful or am I projecting that because I'm feeling frustrated. That might just be a very small, quick moment. It doesn't have to overhaul your entire, really all I want, is my pin to be redone or whatever you know what I mean?

Or just to get the cash back. It doesn't have to change your entire dynamic, but it helps. I think those little moments, the more we're aware of it, builds up over time. Jessica Mendoza and Jing Pung of the Christian Science Monitor on Let's Find Common Ground. I'm Richard. And I'm Ashley. And although we love doing this show, we don't just produce podcasts at Common Grand Committee. Check out some of our other work by subscribing to our YouTube channel. It's one more venue where we aim to shed light, not heat, on some of our most polarizing issues. Now back to our interview with Jing and Jess. Episode four of your podcast, Say That Again,

is called Talking Black with Pride. And Black English is often looked down upon, especially by outsiders, and that can have a real effect on the people who speak it. Tell us about Elaine Richardson, the scholar of Black language, who you spoke with. She has an amazing story. Dr. Richardson, Dr. of black language who you spoke with. She has an amazing story. Dr. Richardson, Dr. E, in particular, she's from Ohio, born and raised, and grew up with a Jamaican mother, Jamaican immigrant mother, and a father from Virginia. So

black family, black neighborhood, and had always felt that her way of speaking and sort of just the way she'd been perceived throughout her life has been sort of different. Everybody else in my neighborhood, their parents or their grandparents were from the south. So we were a little bit different. And I didn't really know it until people started asking me, you know, why did my mother talk funny? Is your mom a Puerto Rican? Or like if my mother happened to be cooking some Jamaican food, what is that that you all eat? Y'all fools think. You know, it's such a complicated story, but essentially she saw herself as being less than, and we know that our own personal insecurities, when coupled with

circumstances that can take advantage of that, can lead to really disastrous consequences. And that's what happened to her. And she wound up being trafficked first when she was in junior high, and then managed to get out of that situation, and then sort of fell into it again later in life. I went to Cleveland State University and I didn't know where I fit in. I didn't want to talk to people because I felt like as soon as I opened my mouth, they're going to know I'm from the ghetto. I started meeting different kinds of black people that were not from the ghetto. Didn't talk like I talked.

And I figured I'm different. So I just didn't try to fit in with them. I found people on campus that I did fit in with. And they all drank and smoked weed and hung out. I started slipping in my classes and pretty soon I got kicked out of Cleveland State. I started hanging in what they used to call after hours' joints in Cleveland. And those were places where street people hung. And those were people that I felt comfortable around. That's when I got with my second camp.

And it was really only through education and sort of determination and like the help of people who really believed in her that she was able to get out of it. And the interesting part of her story is that in college, where she finally went back and like tried to get her degree, that was the only time, you know, as an adult that she learned that there was such a thing as black English and that her speech and her culture had a history that was, you know,

worth learning about and and respecting and even celebrating. And Vivian Nixon was another interviewer in that show and she's among the people who really love Black English and see it as rich and very much part of the community, right? Yeah, for Vivian, she grew up in the 60s. Today, she's a writer on criminal justice and she had worked for about 20 years with a nonprofit that helps incarcerated women, go to college, but she grew up

sort of on the border of white community and black communities and learn to code switch pretty seamlessly. And I think that along with that expectation in her words that black folks felt a need to prove that they are worthy. They can meet the standards that white people have set. And so there's this pressure that is reflected linguistically of just, you can't slip up. And this was born home to her by one teacher at her school, who reprimanded Vivian for using black English in the playground. Here's Vivian talking about that teacher, Mrs. Woodard. Like many Southern people who get an education come to the North to make good,

she was so determined to kind of prove that these civil rights advances are deserved because we're going to be productive citizens, but in a way that is very much about assimilation and not about a collaboration of cultures. So Mrs. Woodard was the first black teacher in her school. Very proper in her words. And what she hated most was actually black English in a way, in the classroom or in the playground. So... Because it was incorrect in her view. Right. And I think to what Jing was saying before about there being standards set, I think there was this...

And it still is, frankly, an association between black English as we understand it as something that is, something that is only appropriate in certain spaces and not certainly not in schools and not in professional spaces. And this was much more pronounced back when Vivian Nixon was in the fifth grade. Slightly earlier, you mentioned the term code switch. What is that? I think it's, this is probably not the like scientific definition, but it's basically

when you as a person are able to move from one way of speaking to another depending on the circumstances. And I think, you know, a lot of us do this in a much more subtle way in pretty much any conversation. There's lots of studies to show that we adapt to the conversation that we're having in order to be better understood. But code switching is much more pronounced. It's when, for example, yes, a black person will speak a particular way with other black people or people that they're comfortable with and then speak a different way at

work. That's not something that only black communities do or even but I do that. We all do that between home and work, like there's all sorts of ways that we can switch. It just varies according to level, I think. I do it all the time. My sisters grew up in stated England.

They have English accents. I have English nieces and nephews and I speak quite differently with them than I am right now to you. Here's the secret of it. It's not about accent, it's about rhythm. If if you get into the kind of rhythm that my nieces and nephews are talking about, then I can make myself understood. Right. You just switched. Yeah. Just one interesting thing about code

switch. It's like, you know, if you speak multiple languages, right? And when I'm talking to my family, I switch to Chinese status code switching, too. If you look globally, it is a very, very common phenomenon. Actually, maybe it's more like in the US, which feels like the center of the world. A lot of people are monolingo or monodialecto that only speak one dialect that code switching feels like a fancy thing but if you look around the world, it's what I think most people are doing. What are both of you learned as a result of doing this podcast? Are you in a way more tolerant or are you better people? Yes, yes, better people, better persons.

I hope so, I hope so. I think I am a more patient communicator knowing the role that I play as a listener in communications. Yeah, I think that's one big thing. What about you, Jess? I think for me, although I came to this with some experience as somebody who was very much trying to learn it,

like I said before, speak English in a particular way to be perceived in certain ways, like that was important to me. I think I also projected that out. I externalized that by judging people. You would hear somebody on TV or in podcasts or whatever and you're like gosh they couldn't like you know I wish they had fans already better and I talk about this in the podcast I like was very I was like oh gosh their grammar is terrible like so judgey and so I like to think that I'm you know it's hard to do a full 180 but I think I'm much conscious now. And I think there's much more of a sense of like, yeah, the whole point is that we are communicating.

And the point is not that you are communicating in the way that sounds like me or the I think sounds correct. The point is that we are understanding each other and that we are finding a common place to common ground, I guess, to really interact with in a meaningful way. So, what are some of the steps that the rest of us can take, that the uninitiated can take to be better listeners and communicators, and find common ground with people who, at the outset, we might not think we have any with just because they sound different. Well, number one, listen to our podcast. Steps are interesting because the listening coach, the communication coach, sort of laying out a few of those for us,

just very practical ways to be better listeners. And it's, again, bringing an attitude to as many interactions as you can, as often as you can, and making a habit of it. And instead of saying, like, when you don't understand somebody, you should be like, huh, what are you talking about? Is that how you would want somebody to ask you if they don't understand you? I feel like no, usually you want to be more specific.

What was it exactly that you didn't understand? And can you repeat that one more time, or could you say that more slowly? Could you speak a little louder? I couldn't really hear you. Or at the beginning of a conversation being like, hey, I'm getting a sense that the way you speak is not something that I'm super familiar with. Would it be all right if I asked you questions along the way or asked you to repeat yourself?

And just being respectful and mindful of what other people are bringing to that conversation. And I'll add one last thing. I think we have all of these really nice stories of people coming to love their own voices and or coming to appreciate all the human sort of complexity that's behind the way they speak. And hopefully our audience will also get to see their own voice and the voice of people around them differently after they hear the podcast. That's a lovely way to end. Jing pang and Jessica Mendoza, thanks very much for joining us on Let's Find Comment Grant. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Jing and Jess are the hosts of the podcast. Say that again. And this show has been produced in partnership with the Christian Science Monitor. And our podcast, let's find common ground, is a member of the Democracy Group Podcast Network. We often mention their shows at the end of our episodes. And this week's featured show is one that you do, Richard with Jim Megs.

So here's what you recorded. So Richard, how do you describe how do we fix it? Serious. Playfall. Open mind. Argumentative. Liberal-leaning. Libertarian.

Oh, we don't always have the same politics. But we do agree on this. For every problem, there ought to be a solution. A smart solution. We talk solutions on how do we fix it with Jim Megs and Richard Davies. How do we fix it? That's our episode for this week. I'm Ashley Milntite.

I'm Richard Davies. Thanks for listening. Richard Davies. Thanks for listening.