Accents in Job Interviews
How do Southern accent features affect employability in Oklahoma?
In this pilot study for Zoe Haddad's senior honors thesis, employment managers imagined that audio clips of young adults reading randomized sentences were job applicants. They gave their first impressions of the speakers' personalities and suitability for jobs in their industry. Some of the clips included a feature that stands out as Southern, ay-monophthongization (pronouncing the "eye" vowel more like "ah"), and some had a Southern feature that people don't notice or stigmatize, pin-pen merger (pronouncing "en" and "em" like "in, im"). Pin-pen merger is widespread in Oklahoma, but ay-monophthongization is less common nowadays and more likely found in southern or rural parts of the state. Zoe wondered if the stigma against Southern accents that contributes to the loss of ay-monophthongization might also bias employers against young adults applying for jobs.
In short, it looks like it might. Five managers in Oklahoma rated the monophthongal /ay/ speakers with traits associated with Southerners, e.g. less educated but friendly, but there was no clear pattern differentiating merged or distinct pin-pen guises. It didn't matter much if the managers were from Oklahoma, produced the pin-pen merger, or could distinguish pin and pen words.
Papers & Presentations
(*student author)
- *Haddad, Z. (2019). Oklahoma voices in the workplace: The effect of Southern features on employability. Senior honors thesis, Oklahoma State University.
- *Haddad, Z. & Freeman, V. (2020, September). Oklahoma voices in the workplace: The effect of Southern features on employability. Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO), Online.
Related work
- Part of the Oklahoma English project
- Similar methods: Voice Perception in Job Interviews, part of Impressions of Cochlear Implant User Speech
Student Corner
Students
- Zoe Haddad
Data and Materials
- Audio clips of sentences read by 5 female young-adult Oklahomans in two coached guises
("Midwest" and "Southern")
- Varied in presence/absence of two Southern features: ay-monophthongization (salient/stigmatized) and pin-pen merger (non-salient) + fillers
- Most speakers naturally produced pin-pen merger but not ay-monophthongization (typical for young Oklahomans)
- Clips of non-Oklahoman saying un/merged pin, pen, tin, ten
- Personality and "employability" semantic differential ratings and minimal pair identifications from 5 employment managers in Oklahoma
- Audio recordings of mangers' word lists, passages, minimal pairs, follow-up commentary
- Basic participant demographics
- Stimuli coaching prompts (.ppt), presentation protocols, minimal pairs list, follow-up questionnaire, semantic differential sheets; consent, IRB forms, etc.
Project Ideas
- Examine the results statistically
- Run similar experiments with more managers, other stimuli, speakers, or listeners