English with an Accent by Rosina Lippi-Green

Author:Rosina Lippi-Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Phanna Xieng is a Cambodian-American who worked for Peoples National Bank of Washington. Mr. Xieng was repeatedly denied a promotion although he had an excellent work history, high marks in his reviews, and had been filling in on the very position he applied for over an extended period of time. There were documented comments from his superiors concerning his accent as the primary stumbling block to his promotion. In this case, the court could not overlook the fact that Mr. Xieng could carry out the job he claimed he could do, in spite of his accent, precisely because he had already been performing well at the job. It might seem that being on the inside – already employed by the Defendant – provides an employee with a valid language-focused discrimination complaint with some strong evidence, but there are many similar cases in which promotion is denied.

Is it the case, then, that the Plaintiff’s chances of winning a language-focused discrimination case depend to the greatest degree on the integrity and objectivity of the judge hearing the trial? Unfortunately, it is not as easy as this. Below it will become clear that for some areas of employment, even the most open-minded of courts still are subject to the unwritten laws of a standard language ideology.

Context

In civil rights violations of the kind discussed here, courts are disposed to favor the employer, which makes it very difficult for the Plaintiff to build a successful case. These cases fail for all kinds of reasons in a variety of combinations, five of which we have seen here:

Kahakua: Court declared Kahakua’s accent a handicap that he could overcome if he wanted to, and found he had not been discriminated against.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.