*🎓 *We are happy to announce the next webinar in the CIRCE online seminar series organized by the CIRCE https://www.circe-project.eu/ project in collaboration with DFCLAM University of Siena https://www.dfclam.unisi.it/en, H2IOSC https://www.h2iosc.cnr.it/ project and CNR-ILC https://www.ilc.cnr.it/en/.
*Dr. Giuliana Regnoli* /University of Salerno, Italy & University of Regensburg, Germany/ */Unveiling linguistic bias: Approaches to accent perception and discrimination/* 📅 *May 26, 2025* 🕓 *4:40 PM – 5:30 PM (CEST)*
*Venue*: Online
*Attendees*: Secondary school teachers, researchers, language instructors
*Summary: *Accent discrimination remains one of the most pervasive forms of linguistic bias, influencing social perceptions, identity construction, and attitudes towards language variation. This talk examines how accents shape linguistic hierarchies and social interactions, drawing on three research projects that employ distinct methodologies. First, we will explore how folk linguistic methods, such as map-drawing tasks, reveal nuanced spatial dimensions of language attitudes, challenging homogenising conceptualisations of World Englishes. This will be illustrated through a study on how a first-generation Indian diasporic community in Germany perceives and evaluates accent variation in Indian English. We will then turn to traditional language attitude research methods, focusing on questionnaire data to investigate overt stigmatisations and highlighting the importance of scale validation in direct attitude measurement. This discussion will be grounded in a pilot study on Italian university students’ direct attitudes towards English in Italy and their perceptions of Italian English. Finally, we will examine language attitudes in primary education in Cameroon, emphasising the importance of understanding children’s language perceptions within broader ideological frameworks. This analysis draws on data from parental and children’s questionnaires, as well as semi-structured interviews with children. By shedding light on early linguistic gatekeeping and its role in decolonising language education, this study also explores when and how these beliefs become embedded in society. Taken together, these projects demonstrate how different methodological approaches can be employed to investigate attitudes towards accents and linguistic variation, ultimately providing insights into how we can better understand and tackle accent discrimination.
*Bio*: Dr. Giuliana Regnoli is assistant professor of English linguistics at the University of Salerno and a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Regensburg. Her research interests include variationist sociolinguistics, sociophonetics, language attitudes, perceptual dialectology, and World Englishes. She is currently working on children's English in Cameroon and Italian university students' attitudes toward English(es) world-wide.
Upcoming webinars:
- Clara Molina (Monday, June 30, 2025)
- Sender Dovchin (Monday, July 7, 2025)
- Christian Ilbury (Monday, September 22, 2025)
The seminar is free of charge, but participants must register. To access this and next events, you should create an account on theH2IOSC Training Environment https://h2iosc-training-platform.ilc4clarin.ilc.cnr.it/registration. Once logged in with your credentials, choose the course “Language and Accent Discrimination - Online Seminar Series” and activate it with the code PbK837GtE. Make sure to have the Teams platform installed.
The registrations of the previous CIRCE Seminars are also available on the H2IOSC Training Environment. For any inquiry, write to contact@circe-project.eu.