When speech becomes a stereotype

“Daw agi ka,” my classmate softly growled at me in Hiligaynon, exaggerating the movement of his lips to imitate how he thought gay men spoke. I had simply reminded him that we had an assignment due the next day.

“Ano gina-Kinaray-a mo? Daw agi ka gid ya pamatian!” he added.

I remember being taken aback, not because I had been called gay, but because speaking Kinaray-a was apparently enough for someone to make assumptions about my sexuality. My pronunciation, intonation, or perhaps the quality of my voice had become evidence of who I supposedly was. At the time, I did not know how to explain what had happened. I only knew that my speech had been turned into a judgment about me.

There is considerable research behind this experience. Listeners can make judgments about a speaker’s sexuality based on the voice alone. Studies have found that people associate particular vocal characteristics with gay or straight identities (Gaudio, 1994; Munson et al., 2006). These perceptions can also lead to stereotyping. Fasoli et al. (2017), for example, found that voices perceived as gay or lesbian could activate gender-related stereotypes and even influence judgments related to employability. What may seem like a casual comment about how someone speaks can, therefore, reinforce stereotypes with real social and professional consequences.

Years later, as a teacher, I began encountering another version of the same problem. Students have told me they are afraid to speak English in class because they might say something “grammatically wrong.” When asked why mistakes frighten them, they repeatedly give the same answer — they fear being laughed at or mocked. They have been teased about their pronunciation, corrected publicly, or embarrassed after using the wrong word or verb form. Open Facebook and you will see a lot of this. Jugo (2020), studying Filipino undergraduate teacher-education students, likewise identified fear of making mistakes and negative evaluation as important dimensions of language anxiety.

I wish I could comfortably place myself on the receiving end of these judgments, but I cannot, because I have caught myself doing the same thing. I may notice an accent or a mispronunciation and then make assumptions about where someone came from or how educated they might be. I may hear someone use English differently and silently judge the grammar or pronunciation. Sometimes I recognize the judgment only after it has already crossed my mind. So, in writing about linguistic prejudice, I am not writing as someone innocent of it. I have been laughed at for the way I speak, but I have also, however casually, participated in the same habit of judging others through language.

This is unsurprising because we Filipinos grew up believing that speaking “good English” means following every grammar rule we learned in school, pronouncing words in the “right” way and, if possible, sounding a little less Filipino. Sociolinguists describe the belief in an ideal, uniform form of language against which other varieties are measured as standard language ideology (Lippi-Green, 2012).

This becomes complicated in the Philippines, where English exists alongside Hiligaynon, Kinaray-a, Cebuano, Ilocano, Waray, Tagalog, and many other languages. Naturally, these languages affect how we speak English. Yet regional accents are not evaluated equally. Quinto et al. (2024), in a study involving 982 Filipino listeners, found that speakers with Cebuano and Ilocano English accents were evaluated less favorably in certain dimensions than speakers with Tagalog English accents. Accent can therefore become a shortcut for assumptions about competence, education, background, or personality.

Recognizing this does not mean abandoning grammar or pretending that anything goes. Language teachers still have a responsibility to teach the conventions expected in academic, professional, and formal contexts. But teaching conventions is different from making students feel that their accent, first language, or way of speaking is something they must erase. Language variation is normal, and the way we speak inevitably carries traces of where we grew up, the languages we know, and the communities we belong to.

Years ago, my classmate thought he was merely commenting on my Kinaray-a. My students probably think their classmates are merely laughing at a grammatical mistake. I, too, have made judgments about people because of how they speak. Maybe experiencing things from both sides has helped me realize how easily we fall into it — and that there’s so much more to a person than just a few words we hear. It’s a gentle reminder to look beyond the surface.

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Michael Caesar C. Tubal teaches language, literature, and pedagogy in tertiary education. During his free time, if he is not teaching, reading, or writing, he watches past episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race or joins the book clubs in Iloilo City.