Talk:Linguistic Discrimination Against Immigrants in Canada

Hi,

I really enjoyed reading your article and I think you did a good job explaining linguistic Discrimination. One comment I have is that under your subheading "females" it doesn't really address how their sex affected the hiring process - aside from the study being conducted on women there isn't much information as to how the intersection of being female AND having an accent affected the hiring process. If you could find for information on why immigrant women were treated differently than immigrant men I think it would help a lot! I would also maybe avoid the repetition of "According to Statistics Canada" and just say it once and reference it to the statistics link at the bottom of the page to avoid it sounding redundant.

Finally I think you could add a portion on ethnocentrism and how it plays a role and perhaps how the race of immigrants has an effect - are white people with an accent more likely to be accepted than minorities with accents?

Hope this helps!

Thank you very much for sharing this topic. Canada is known to a multi-cultural and linguistic county, but as you points out, there is a preconception or prejudice that speaking English in fluent is compatible with intelligence. In the point of view from an Asian international student, I personally experienced this type of discrimination　at immigration, Vancouver airport. It was shocking for me that immigration officer started asking softly when showing my acceptance of letter from UBC. Therefore, English as a lingua franca, every persons who are non-native English speaker has their own English, which should not be standardized. I think it might be good to bring the number which shows how speaking in fluent affects job opportunities for immigrants (statistics Canada... if there is information...)

I appreciate how your analysis focuses on women and youth as these groups experience distinct barriers when navigating immigrant experience. However, I feel like you could potentially afford to be more explicit in discussing why you choose to focus on these groups in particular and the intersection they occupy.

All in all I really enjoyed reading your article. I am a native english speaker with an accent that is seen as normal, so I think these experiences are something I should be doing more work to learn about.

Hi Harjyot,

Thanks so much for bringing this topic to light. I was particularly interested by your mention of accent reduction courses. Recently I read an article by UBC's paper, the Ubyssey, which mentioned an accent reduction course at UBC that had been cancelled. The course was initially promoted as pertaining to job interviews, but in actuality, it was general accent reduction. https://www.ubyssey.ca/news/ubc-cancels-accent-reduction-workshop/

I think it might be interesting if you could talk in your entry about the social and cultural implications of an accent reduction course. I personally feel that such courses may have utility if a person is having a hard time being understood in the workplace due to their accent. At the same time, such courses could promote xenophobic intolerance of accents in the workplace, and unnecessary cultural assimilation as opposed to fostering diversity. Perhaps you could delve into this a bit more in your section on Youth, as it has particular significance for young immigrants or international students trying to enter the job market.

Hi Harjyot,

Thank you for bringing up this topic, as an international student whose mother tongue language is not English myself, I feel very relatable. Even when I have never experienced discrimination due to my accent during my time in Canada, I have already faced some difficulties in my daily life and in my study, having to speak, read, write, listen to a language that is not my mother tongue language. Learning a language and using it fluently is not easy to achieve so it is very sad to see people experiencing discrimination while trying to create a better life in a new country due to their accents. I think that you can definitely expand your work by considering the experiences of immigrants of different sex (not just female), gender, race, social class,...