#accentism

Dyslexic and Dysgraphic people who struggle with spelling, grammar, handwriting, physical pain when writing, grip issues, alignment issues, organizing ideas, sentence formulation, vocabulary/expression, fluency, word retrieval, pronunciation, narrative flow, speech speed, comprehension, stuttering, and/or articulation, I love you.

People with ASD/Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD/Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, DLD/Developmental Language Disorders, SLI/Specific Language Impairment, Cerebral Palsy, or any other developmental disability that impairs language skills, I love you.

People with Down Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, FASD/Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorders, or any other intellectual disability that impairs language skills, I love you.

People with aphasia, dementia, TBIs/Traumatic Brain Injuries, brain tumors, meningitis, CAS/Childhood Apraxia of Speech, or any other neurological disorder/brain injury that impairs language skills, I love you.

Deaf and HoH/Hard of Hearing people who struggle with language, I love you.

Blind and partially sighted people who struggle with language, I love you.

People with a cleft palate, congenital facial issues, or other physical/structural impairments that affect speech, I love you.

Scottish, Welsh, Anglo-Romani, Brogue, Irish, Euro, AAE/AAVE (African American English/African American Vernacular English), Cajun, LVE (Latine Vernacular English), Indigenous, High Tider, New Orleans, SAE (Southern American English), Afro-Seminole Creole, Gullah, Hawaiian Pidgin, Aboriginal, Caribbean, Central and South American, Asian, African, Oceanic, South Atlantic, any other pidgin or "broken English" language, Interlanguage, or any other English speaker who experiences accentism, I love you.

People with low literacy skills/non-literate English speakers and writers, I love you.

English Signers, AAC users, or others who communicate non-verbally, I love you.

English Language Learners, I love you.

No one should ever have to face discrimination for the way they talk, write, or otherwise communicate. Your dialect, accent, or way of speaking is not an indicator of your intelligence. You are a beautiful person who has the right to be listened too regardless of how you communicate your ideas. There is no wrong way to communicate.

FGC/Shutterstock Jane Setter, University of Reading The way a person speaks is an intrinsic part of their identity. It’s tribal, marking a speaker as being from one social group or another. Accents are a sign of belonging as much as something that separates communities. Yet we can probably all think of examples of people who seem to have “lost” their regional or national accent and of others…

i’m so sorry that you have to deal with that. unfortunately this is such a pervasive and socially acceptable form of discrimination in the uk. scouse as an accent and dialect has been shit on for years, and people say it so casually.

the irritating thing is that these are very likely learned prejudices—people from outside the uk often can’t tell the difference between uk accents and have absolutely no issue with scouse and other regional variations. it’s only because we’re taught that some british accents are ugly (an extremely classist and sometimes racist view that was popularised by, you guessed it, the british upper class snobs wanting to eradicate everything that wasn’t Pure Queen’s English)

Discrimination against people with regional accents

Accent prejudice is the perception that certain accents are inferior to others. Also called accentism.