Tag: Dan

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Final reflection (Dan)

 

After unit 2 ended and we had a list of sources that contained the accumulation of knowledge we would be writing about, I thought that my final project was going to be a breeze. I suppose my thought process was that I have so much information on the topic I chose, that I would have a surplus of things to discuss. Though this was true, I overlooked the fact that having a surplus of sources also complicates your job as a writer because it often forces you to make cuts to your portfolio of sources. Deciding which sources made it into my article and which ones did not was a big struggle for me. In fact, a part of me wishes that I would have put a different article in my final project than the one I did. I am pleased with the way that my project turned out, but in retrospect I feel that the other article would have strengthened my arguments and made my writing flow better.

One thing I learned about writing research papers is that finding article that are of good quality and useful to you is challenging. Sometimes, I would find an article that seems promising only to find out that it is not for me. Another thing I learned was the importance of keeping my intended audience in the back of my mind at all times. When I was looking for articles, I would occasionally come across one that sounded like it is perfect for the topic I was writing about. However, I had found that the audience that the author intended to reach was other peers that are of the same knowledge as them. Reading these papers as a novice was very challenging as I did not have any background knowledge and was not familiar with the nomenclature.

Lastly, this research paper helped me understand the importance of understanding how when you write about a topic you are entering a discussion. It was important that when we wrote papers, we contributed something unique to the overall story. Reading this tip in they say I say was daunting to me. I thought “how am I supposed to come up with a new idea that the people that are experts in the subject?”. Upon further reading, one of the suggestions that I found most helpful was that contributing something unique can be as simple as paraphrasing something someone else wrote and giving your opinion on the matter or the meaning of the matter. One thing I have found really helpful is to come up with a analogy that makes sense to you and share it with your readers.

 

Thank you all for being a great community this semester. I wish you all good luck this upcoming  semester.  Stay healthy and safe

-Dan

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Discussion post 7/6/20 (Dan)

  1. Rahul Chakraborty (a professor at Texas State university) wrote an excellent  article called A Short note on Accent-bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism.  This article explores concepts such as social identity theory (S.I.T.). This is a theory that states how people will identify themselves with others who share similar traits as them. SIT explains that this tendency to categorize ourselves gives us a feeling of familiarity and belongingness. People who are in the same social group of ours form “ingroups” and the people that are not form “outgroups”. Rahul then talks about how this is related to a topic called ethnocentrism. Essential the meaning of this is that members of ingroup believe that their group is centric to everything. This ethnocentrism when taken too far can lead to people discriminating against outgroups Accents are a typical characteristic that people tend to categorize each-other with. The author then offers some tips that can help mitigate the issue of accent discrimination. Some of the tips included the use of speech language pathologists to help nonnative speakers improve their pronunciation in their nonnative language. Another tip was hiring more diverse staff in universities so that students become more accustom to working with people who have a nonnative accent.

This article is an important part of my portfolio explains some of the psychology involved in unconscious bias. This article has taken my understanding of this topic to a much higher level and was crucial to my final project in this class. Another thing I found useful about this article is how it referenced and explained several studies that were conducted which validate his arguments. I found this article through the use of the advanced search on Syracuse Summons library.

Chakraborty, R. (2017). A Short note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 8(4), 57. doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.4p.57

 

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Dan final project

For my final project I have created a blog post with my intended audience being individuals who may not have given much attention to accent discrimination in their lives. The intent of my paper is to create awareness amongst these individuals so that they may identify situations where accent bias is present. I have done this by including a few stories from people who have suffered through scenarios of which they were discriminated against. I then included some information on why this may occur from a psychology standpoint and some various findings from studies of this topic.  A link to my PDF file is below

 

Thanks,

WRT 205 Final essay

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Draft of Final (Dan)

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When most people think about discrimination, the first thing that will likely come to mind would be discrimination of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. However, there is one type of discrimination that is often overlooked. This is something that some people face every single day and have no way of hiding from. The prejudice that I am referring to is accent discrimination. We encounter individuals with different accents all the time living in the United States. Some of the various accents we hear are from native speakers of different regions in the U.S. Other times, the accent may be from individuals who have immigrated here from another country. It is not always the intent of the native lister to discriminate against someone with a foreign accent. Reason being that sometimes this prejudice will rear its head in the form of unconscious bias. Therefore, it is paramount that we learn to identify our own unconscious biases so that we can improve upon them and create a more inclusive society. This blog will seek to explore some of the ways that accent bias is harmful to our society and why we should take action against it.

Before we can explore the reasons behind why accent bias exists, how harmful it can be, and what ways we can mitigate this problem, we must first familiarize ourselves with the concept of unconscious bias. “Unconscious bias or Implicit stereotype is the unconscious attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social outgroup” (Wikepedia, 2020). If we parse this definition of unconscious bias, we can understand that this type of behavior involves assuming certain characteristics of others without realization based entirely upon judgment. It is significant that the core of the problem comprises of people taking action without seeing the full picture. Our lack of situational awareness and our ignorance of the consequences of our actions is truly alarming to me. If we are going to be able to change behavior that is deeply engrained in us, we must first become aware of the effects that our words and actions have on other people. One way that we can do this is by listening to the stories of people affected by unconscious bias such as Mirela Setkik. Mirela is a Bosnian refugee and founder of a successful marketing agency in St Petersburg, Florida. Mirela conducted a TED Talk at the University of South Florida to create awareness about unconscious accent bias in our society. In her TED Talk, Mirela speaks on how she has felt about the way she was treated based on her accent. Mirela states “I have felt judged, questioned, and put under a microscope. Many times, I could tell that people were confused as they didn’t know where to place me. They were suspicious. And it still happens, its probably happening right now” (Setkic, 2019). Mirela continues on by stating “Actually I think I am asked about my accent on a weekly basis by complete strangers who often think it would be fun to play a game of I bet I can guess where your accent is from” (Setkic, 2019). Her story is the epitome of how inaccurate our assumptions can be about other people. I would go further to say that our assumptions about others are most often incorrect. Through having background knowledge of the tragedy that Mirela escaped in former Yugoslavia, it is a shame that she must live her life feeling unwelcome and discriminated against in the country she fled to for safety.

Another example of someone who has faced this type of discrimination and had the courage to speak out against it is an associate director at Columbia University named Hernan Diaz. Hernan was born in Argentina, grew up in Sweden, spent a few years in London in his twenties, and spent most of his life in the United States. Hernan has therefore developed a very unique “mixed accent” throughout his life. In a PBS special based on accent bias. Hernan speaks about his perplexing feelings after seeing flyers on campus advertising programs of accent reduction and accent elimination. In a concerned manner, Hernan begs the questions “Does my accent need correcting? I don’t think so. To sound like who, exactly? A native speaker? What would that even mean?” (Diaz, 2018). This quote from Hernan is quite gripping as it contains multiple facets. Hernan makes a great point when asking the question what it means to sound like a native speaker. In the United States we have many different regional accents that all differ and contain their own slang. There are also other countries such as Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and many others that are native speakers of English even though they don’t sound exactly the same. Also, even if English is ones second language, is there something inherently wrong with having slightly different pronunciation and intonations in your speech? I certainly do not think there is myself.

Now that we have heard from multiple individuals about their experience facing accent discrimination, I would like to explore some of the research that is being done into this field. This research is important as it can help us understand why the problem of unconscious bias exists and offer some possible avenues for solving the issue. One individual who has made great contributions to research in accent discrimination is Rahul Chakraborty, a professor at Texas State university. Rahul wrote a great article called “A Short note on Accent-bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism” which is full of necessary nomenclature and explanations of social behavior that can lead to accent bias. An important topic to be familiar with when thinking about why unconscious bias exists is Social identity theory (SIT). SIT essentially boils down to the fact that people have a strong tendency to form groups amongst themselves based on common characteristics. Perhaps this gives us the sense of familiarity and belongingness that we crave in our lives. Nevertheless, through forming our “ingroups” (those we share traits with) we subsequently create outgroups (those we differ from) of which we have a stronger probability to compete with and view in a negative manner. The varying degree to which we feel attached to our ingroups is dependent on the varying levels of ethnocentrism amongst people. Ethnocentrism is essentially the belief that our ingroups are the center of everything. In other words, we cannot help but to compare outgroup characteristics to the more familiar ingroup characteristics that we use as reference. Though ethnocentrism is not always a bad thing, take for example patriotism or team spirit, too much of it is shown to create overly high identification with ingroups and subsequent derogation of outgroups. As Rahul states in his article “social identity is the primary construct of ethnocentrism”. Stated another way, our propensity to socially categorize ourselves forms basis of which ethnocentrism can thrive. With this in mind, the different accents that people possess is a very common way that they will organize their social groups in. When confronted by individuals that possess remarkably high levels of ethnocentrism, prejudice may arise in various forms as affirmed by Rahul in the following statement.

“Frequently, speakers with nonnative accent are considered less intelligent, less loyal, less competent and of lower status and face both prejudice and stereotypes” (Chakraborty, 2017)

 

Implicit stereotype. (2020, August 02). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype

Setkic, M. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.ted.com/talks/mirela_setkic_where_is_your_accent_from_the_subtle_aggression_of_accent_guessing

(2018, July 03). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/we-stigmatize-accents-but-language-belongs-to-everyone

Chakraborty, R. (2017). A Short note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 8(4), 57. doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.4p.57

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Discussion 6/29/20 ( Dan)

1.

Cori Wong entered a very important and popular topic in her article “Changing organizational culture: from embedded bias to equity and inclusion”.  As we are learning in our studies of the book “They say I say”, it is important for an author to enter a conversation and to add something new to it as opposed to simply restating facts and ideas authors have come up with. She did just that in a very enlightening way when she used a metaphor for describing the difference between equality and equity. Her metaphor was that if a group of people are running a long race, a decision based on equality would be to give them all the same exact shoe (size and all). This technically treats everyone the same as equality strives for. However, people have different sized feet (i.e. different needs). Therefore, some people may have an inherent advantage in running the race due to their perfect fitting shoes while others are at a disadvantage who’s feet don’t fit. Equity on the other hand would be assessing individual’s needs and getting them a shoe that fits well to give them equal opportunity to succeed in the race. I believe this metaphor was an excellent contribution to the conversation of diversity and inclusion. This was significant to me because it really helped me visualize and understand the difference between equity and equality. It is very important to be able to distinguish the difference because the language that we use is powerful and can dramatically impact how our society functions.

 

2.

After reading chapter 8 of “They say, I say” and reading Cori Wong’s article, I noticed multiple location where she used important moves to “connect the parts” of her sentences and paragraphs. In doing so, Cori was able to create an article that reads very easily and flows nicely. Had she omitted the various transitional words/phrases her writing would be choppy and would be much more challenging to understand. The following paragraph found on page two of the article states

“[While diversity often refers to representation of difference, inclusion refers to how differences are meaningfully incorporated and integrated into daily practices. As such, a better way to frame the commitment to be more equitable and inclusive would start by asking, “Who is not represented at the proverbial table? In what ways have we kept some people out?”]”

After her first sentence explaining the definition of diversity and inclusion, Cori begins the sentence with “As such”. This technique refers back to her previous sentence and indicates to the reader that she is going to add something related but new to her argument. She does this by staying on topic but including the addition of an example to help the reader digest the new ideas she is describing.

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Discussion post (6-15-20)

3. I can tell that the article “The problem with diversity in computing” has a good flow to it. The reason for this is the excellent transitions that Ian uses from paragraph to paragraph. His ability and the transition sentences he forms prevents his article from sounding choppy. For example, He speaks about Charles Isbell who is the director of the constellations program at Georgia tech. Isbell claims that we should be more interested in integration of individuals as opposed to just diversity. Ian places the following quote at the end of the paragraph.

“Diversity is just membership,” Isbell said. “Integration is influence, power, and partnership.”

This allows Ian to start his next paragraph by responding to Isbell’s assertations by stating that integration is much harder than diversity. He adds in another quote from Isbell stating that in order to reach integration in industry new folks need to be capable and confident and older folks need to be willing. This sets him up for the following paragraph where he speaks about the willingness of tech industry giants such as Google.

 

  1. I was intrigued by Bryans work about language diversity. One of the facts that I found most interesting is that when most people think of diversity they often think of race, religion, and gender. Nonnative accents are generally not the first thing that comes to mind. However, nonnative accent discrimination is a serious problem and should be discussed so that we can strive to find a solution. I really liked the TED talk that Bryan included by Lera Boroditsky in which she discusses how language affects our thinking. Some of the parts that I found most interesting was how some cultures such as a specific tribe in Australia base their entire language off of the directions north, south, east, and west. This helps them to stay very oriented which is opposite to our culture. Another thing I found interesting is how a language such as English places blame on someone who makes an accident ( such as breaking a vase). We say “John broke the vase”. In other cultures such as Spanish speaking cultures it is much more common to say “The vase broke” when speaking of an accident.

This topic that Bryan chose has really opened my eyes to new issues of organizational culture. It has formed the basis of my unit 2 research and my unit 3 research paper.

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5 Rhetorical moves (Dan)

Upon reading “The problem with diversity in computing” I was able to identify a handful of techniques the other used to communicate his ideas.

First, right off the bat Ian discusses problems that Amy Webb, a professor at NYU, and other females deal with at TSA precheck lines due to the technological systems. Issues such as the X rays not being able to distinguish their underwire bras and large curly hair that results in more extensive checks and pat-downs. By doing this Ian is able to illustrate a problem that is very relatable and understandable. This sets Ian up for further examples to strengthen his argument.

Second, he uses an experience from his own workplace at Georgia tech. There is a certain center at the university that focus on funding and supporting computer-science classes in public schools in Atlanta that are predominantly black. Including this shows that the issue is serious and that there are institutions (like his) that are attempting to fix the issue.

Thirdly, Ian now states “Those efforts have merit, but their impact might be a drop in the bucket given the size of the tech industry.” By saying this he alludes to the fact that there is still a lot of work to be done and that everyone needs to do their part. This is a call to action after expressing the importance of the issue.

Fourth, Ian introduces a new perspective through Charles Isbell, the executive director at Georgia techs “constellations” program. The prospective is that though diversity is important to strive for, the real goal is integration as it would change the entire industry as a result of their presence in the community. This is contrary to Amy’s perspective that we may not need push kids to go into STEM.

The last strategy he uses is by paraphrasing something Amy said. “We’re all discriminated against by computing,” and “Anyone who falls outside of that core group of interests are not being represented”. Ian states that if this is true, then maybe the problem isn’t that its not including the needs of the diverse public but that the problem with computing is intrinsic. I believe by stating this he takes something that someone else has written and flips it in his favor by highlighting what the statement lacks and making it seem not well thought out.

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Research Portfolio (Dan )

The topic that I chose to study is unconsious accent bias. I was intrigued by the a similar topic that I saw one of our classmates conducted in unit 1. Upon starting my research, I was surprised to see that there is a relatively small amount of research done into this topic compared to other types of discrimination. However, through the use of some of these tools provided in this class I as able to find some quality sources. My main method of finding these sources was through the Syracuse university library. However, I had never heard of SAGE before and was pleasantly surprised with how much it helped me. This topic is one that is meaningful to me as some of my very close friends are not natives of the United States. It was very eye opening read the stories of the discrimination and feeling of loneliness that some people experience all because of their nonnative accent. I would like to continue searching for more articles that explore some of the ways that we can mitigate this problem. I am looking forward to tying all of my research together in unit 3.

Annotation 1 ( Mirela ted talk)

Annotation 2 (PBS)

Annotation 3 (short note on accent-bias)

Annotation 4 (Accent bias_forbes)

Annotation 5 ( political skill)

Annotation 6 ( speaking with nonnative accent)

WRT 205 focusing flowchart

Rounding out the conversation

Complicating your research ( final )

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Research plan (Dan)

In the unit 1 “Expanding the canon assignment” I was intrigued by the work of one of my classmates. The topic that he chose was language diversity. This peaked my interest as when I think about diversity, language diversity and foreign accents are not the first to come to mind.

This has led me to the question that has driven my unit two research assignment. How are people with nonnative accents treated in the workplace and how can we mitigate the unconscious bias that leads them to suffering?

This topic is close to my heart as I have a few dear friends of mine at work that are not from the United States. One of my friends is from Bosnia, another is from the Dominican Republic, and the last is from a place north of India called Bhutan. I have seen them work very hard and not seem to get the recognition that I know they deserve. Although, I believe in our situation it may not be due entirely to their accents, I do believe that the accents they have may have an affect as to why certain managers haven’t developed a stronger relationship with them.

I’m positive that this problem occurs in all industries in all parts of the world. One would think that a problem this big would have a plethora of information and research into it. However, I have found that this seems to be a topic that is often overlooked. Though the articles that I am finding have been helpful in expanding my knowledge of unconscious accent bias and its effects. I have found this information through databases such as Syracuse Summons, Google search, and Ted Talks on Youtube. I look forward to sharing my findings with the class.

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Discussion week of 6/22 (Dan)

  1. So far I have been using the Syracuse library as my main database for finding sources. Although it took a little bit of digging, I was able to find an article that I thoroughly enjoyed in unit 1. I seem to be struggling a little more with unit 2. I have found many scholarly articles on linguistic diversity in the workplace through the SU library (though some are quite lengthy). I am mainly struggling with finding a primary source. The advanced search option has many filters which has helped me obtain some options. Though I have not yet decided which article I would like to focus my attention on. I will spend some time looking for other sources ( especially a primary source) with resources such as Google and Bing.
  2. My topic that I am choosing to research is unconscious bias of multilingual individuals in the workplace. I was intrigued by the work of one of my classmates on this topic. I believe this was in no small part due to my friendship with multiple immigrants in my department at my job. I am really hoping to find a primary source that is written by someone who has immigrated to the United States and experienced the struggles of being a nonnative speaker. I believe this will be a very valuable source of information to include in my research as they will have first hand experience with these issues. I would like to hear about how they were treated and if they felt valued at work. I would also like to hear about if they were compensated fairly and given the same opportunity to prove themselves as natives of our country have been given. Though I am struggling to find a source that does this. I am going to continue searching the web until I find a primary source that is satisfactory.