The Linguist

16 The Linguist Vol/64 No/4 ciol.org.uk/thelinguist FEATURES How attitudes towards accents contribute to professional and academic gatekeeping. By Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi A PhD candidate in Delhi begins a viva with a carefully practised greeting. Within seconds an examiner interjects: "Slow down, and please round your vowels." The candidate adjusts, shifting from her everyday English to a monitored, slower voice learnt in coaching sessions. The questions that follow probe her theory and data, yet the written report later commends "improved pronunciation" before it praises her findings. In that room, authority is first perceived as sound. Accent, intonation and pacing operate as forms of linguistic capital that advantage Global North norms in academic life. Building on Derrida's critique of phonocentrism, 1 I extend the term to describe the tacit ranking of accents that regulates who sounds authoritative. Accent functions as a kind of capital that Global South scholars must repeatedly manage and justify to be taken seriously. Raciolinguistic work shows how judgements of clarity and fluency can be racialised and classed, even when framed as neutral concerns about intelligibility. 2 Much of my research is in an Indian context, but I have also examined case studies of English language teaching in China and of Received Pronunciation (RP) as a professional ideal in Nigeria. Similar prejudices towards accents associated with class, regions or non- native speakers exist throughout the world. In the academic arena, there are four key areas where the accent of authority is produced. Hiring talks. Recruiters often say they are evaluating ideas, but in practice, cues like tempo, vowel quality and turn-taking shape the first few minutes of an interview. In several of the doctoral admissions panels and job interviews I observed, a senior scholar restated a candidate's answer "for clarity". The repetition was slower and in a prestige accent (i.e. one that is considered superior or 'correct'). The committee quoted the paraphrase in later notes rather than the original answer. Once an idea is revoiced in a prestige accent it is more readily valued. Viva examinations. India has a robust market for viva coaching. Trainers teach candidates to 'neutralise' central vowels, flatten rising tones and avoid rapid consonant clusters. Their practice materials include mock questions, time management tips and oral drills. Candidates rehearse 'bridging' sentences such as "Thank you for that important question" to give themselves time to reset their articulation. The stated aim is intelligibility; the social lesson is alignment. In one coaching session, the instructor played an audio of the same argument twice. The 'after' version replaced a crisp [t] sound with a softer one, toned down the stronger Indian consonants and slowed the delivery. The content did not change yet the class agreed that this version sounded more confident. Here, confidence is an auditory effect, not a property of the argument. Peer review. Comments that a manuscript is 'well written but the talk was less polished' are common. Though reviewers rarely mention accent directly – using words such as 'polish', 'confidence' and 'clarity' instead – in reality the difference often comes down to the accent. I compiled a small corpus of conference feedback from India: phrases like 'hard to follow' clustered with 'rapid speech' and 'heavy accent', while 'lucid' clustered with 'measured pace' and 'clear enunciation'. None of these terms is improper yet they carry a history that rewards specific prosodies. Classroom participation. Students who speak with local Englishes report that they plan their questions in advance then abandon them when a discussion quickens. What troubles them is not the content but knowing when and how to join the turn-taking flow. If teachers repeat only the questions that sound confident to them, then the record of who 'participated' will naturally favour students whose accents fit that expectation. Online teaching has intensified this problem. The audio often cuts out because of weak internet connections and these pauses give the impression the speaker is hesitating. Automated captions handle prestige accents better than others. Several students told me that the captions supplied by the platform made them appear incoherent, even when their classmates understood them. How norms get written into rules The hierarchy of accents enters institutions through three conduits. None of them requires explicit bias; all of them produce it. Testing rubrics as mobility gatekeepers. The speaking bands for the IELTS and TOEFL English-language tests are framed as general proficiency measures. In China, they take on an additional role, aligning global mobility with specific accents. High school students and undergraduates spend months training Sound judgement?

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