We invite you to participate in a series of webinars addressing accent discrimination and related issues. Accent discrimination is one of the most widespread and persistent forms of discrimination, arising solely from prejudice based exclusively on how people speak.
The upcoming webinar:
Speaker: Alice Henderson (Université de Grenoble Alpes, France)
Webinar title: Learning to Listen: Coping with Spoken Variation in the Workplace
Date and time: Monday, April 28, 2025 – 16:30 CET
Webinar duration: 1 hour.
Venue: Online on the MS Teams platform
Attendees: Secondary school teachers, researchers, language instructors and other interested persons.
Overview of the webinar:
The universityplays a key role in fostering internationalisation, where diverse communities, languages, and cultures interact. As a result, university staff constantly encounter a variety of accents from colleagues and students (such as Italian, English, or French), and communication often becomes a real challenge. Even with the best intentions, it is sometimes impossible to understand the speaker. In spoken communication, what matters is not only how the speaker uses language but also the listener’s actions and abilities. This shift in perspective raises two fundamental questions: Can we, as listeners, learn to comprehend linguistic diversity better? And if so, how can we do it most effectively?
In this webinar, the speaker, Alice Henderson, will summarise her findings from recent linguistic research on how listeners can improve their ability to adapt to new speakers and unfamiliar accents. She will discuss perspectives on accents and focus on three key aspects: whether the speech is accented, whether it is easy to understand and whether it can be clearly perceived. The speaker will present specific strategies for effectively understanding accented speech, with an emphasis on the role of listeners rather than speakers. The examples shared will primarily come from the researcher’s personal experience working with non-academic staff at a large public university in France. If time permits, the speaker will also outline the following stages of the ongoing longitudinal research.
About the speaker:
Alice Henderson is a professor at Université Grenoble Alpes (France), where she teaches English for Specific Purposes to Science & Technology students. For 24 years, she taught English phonetics and phonology and conducted teacher training in France, Norway, Poland, and Spain. In 2009, she initiated the international conference English Pronunciation: Issues & Practices, which has been held every two years since.
Her research interests include English pronunciation teaching and learning, the perception of foreign-accented speech, and English Medium Instruction (EMI). While much of her work focuses on speakers, she is particularly interested in the role of listeners—examined from both intercultural and sociolinguistic perspectives.
The following webinars:
- – Ana Tankosic, Intersectionality in translingual spaces: Migrant experiences from ‘down-under’ (Monday, May 12, 2025)
- – Giuliana Regnoli, Unveiling linguistic bias: Approaches to accent perception and discrimination (Monday, May 26, 2025)
- – Clara Molina, Unlearning Accentism: Action Research and Critical Pedagogies (Monday, June 30, 2025)
All webinars are free of charge, but please note that prior registration is required. First, create an account by clicking the following link → H2IOSC Training Environment. Once logged in, choose the course “Language and Accent Discrimination – Online Seminar Series” and activate it with the code PbK837GtE. Please ensure that the Microsoft Teams platform is installed on your device.
Registrations for the previous CIRCE webinars are also accessible on the H2IOSC Training Environment. If you have any questions, please contact us by email at contact@circe-project.eu
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.