*🎓 *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/>.
*Prof. Sender Dovchin*
/Curtin University, Australia/
*/Accentism as a Form of Linguistic Racism: Unpacking Power, Prejudice,
and Emotionality/*
đź“… *July 7, 2025*
🕓 *2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (CEST)*
*Venue*: Online
*Attendees*: Researchers, secondary school teachers, language instructors
*Summary: *Accentism is one of the key features of linguistic racism. It
is a form of linguistic discrimination against individuals not only
based on their accents but also on their race. Accentism functions as a
potent social marker that invokes judgements about a speaker’s race,
intelligence, credibility and belonging. Accentism should always be
understood at the intersectionality of racism because one’s accent is
never judged by separation from the language users’ race.
In this presentation, I examine multilayered consequences of accentism,
with the aim of advancing scholarly understanding of how accent-based
discrimination functions as a pervasive form of linguistic racism.
English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) people in Australia
frequently report being misunderstood due to their accents. These
experiences are not isolated or incidental – they are shaped by
entrenched powerful ideologies about the standardized and dominant
language system.
Prejudice caused by accentism against the racialized language users
could pose serious emotional harms, leading to linguistic inferiority
complexes such as social withdrawal, a sense of non-belonging, low
self-esteem, fear, and anxiety. The accumulation of these inferiority
complexes further instigates severe depressive symptoms of mental
health, such as suicidal ideations, eating disorders, substance abuse
and depression.
Accentism is a critical issue in social justice and calls for systemic
interventions to disrupt accent-based discrimination. I conclude this
presentation by discussing the pedagogical implications for language
educators. I emphasize the importance of taking an integrated approach
to address accentism and its emotional and psychological harms together
in order to transform language education.
*Bio: *Professor Sender Dovchin is currently a Senior Principal Research
Fellow at the School of Education, Curtin University, Australia. She is
also an Australian Research Council Fellow and a Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science Research Fellow. Previously, she worked at the
University of Aizu, Japan and National University of Mongolia. Professor
Dovchin was also an Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Review of Applied
Linguistics - national top journal. Professor Dovchin is a
world-leading applied linguist who has been twice recognised by The
Australian Research Magazine—in 2021 and 2024—as the top linguist in the
nation and among the top 250 researchers across all fields in Australia.
She is also ranked in the top 2% of the most cited scholars globally,
according to the Stanford University citation database. As a proud
Mongolian background woman, she actively incorporates Southern theories,
including Indigenous perspectives, into her work. She has led multiple
high-impact research projects, all focused on empowering children and
young people from Indigenous, refugee, and migrant backgrounds in
Australia and beyond. She has authored multiple research monographs and
edited volumes with prestigious international publishers such as
Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and among others. In
addition, she has published over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles—most
as sole or lead author—in top-tier Q1 journals, widely regarded as
benchmarks of scholarly excellence in the discipline.
Upcoming webinars:
- Eldin Milak (Monday, September 1, 2025)
- Christian Ilbury (Monday, September 22, 2025)
- Onur Ozkaynak (Monday, October 13, 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
[email protected]._______________________________________________
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