Natasha Warner on Nostr: Every year when we do our mandatory anti-discrimination online training, it requires ...

Every year when we do our mandatory anti-discrimination online training, it requires us to click (twice, on the same question) saying that yes, it's OK to discriminate on the basis of a job candidate having a non-native accent in their English, even though the question implies that the candidate's English is probably just about proficient enough for the job. For the second year in a row, I just attempted to find out which office controls this thing, and wrote to them to ask them to change or delete this question. This time I offered that the Linguistics department will be happy to write them some better questions that actually teach about linguistic discrimination based on either racially-coded dialect or non-native accent. Last time I got a response along lines of "the question reflects what the law says." We'll see if I do better this year. Credit to nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq580dhdqk4wjdmjfvhm9vvf64j6zmdt45r8tx3g5faq4plfyunswsjy43t4 (nprofile…43t4) for pointing out to me last year how the question implied the L2 speaker's English actually was good enough, rather than not good enough, for the job. #Linguistics #Sociolinguistics