Worse for the wear: Effects of raciolinguistic ideologies, gender ideologies, and clothing on ESL pronunciation perception

Abstract

Accents are products of perception as well as production; it is crucial that accentedness research address teacher discrimination rather than focusing on so-called student "deficiencies." Raciolinguistic ideologies and gender ideologies are factors that can affect teacher perception, interacting together in nuanced, non-additive ways. This case study employing matched-guise methodology investigates a White ESL teacher's differential ratings of pronunciation based on students' race, gender, and cultural clothing. Results show that clothing helps index figures of personhood that are more than the sum of race and gender ideologies and emphasize that even progressive and linguistically-trained teachers may still engage in biased rating practices.