Citation

Bhatia TK. World Englishes 2018; 37(3): 421-431.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/weng.12329

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The aim of this article is fourfold: (1) to define the notion of 'accent' from two linguistic and socio-psychological perspectives; (2) to examine the multi-faceted dimensions of accent in terms of the (bio-)linguistic mind and the social mind; (3) to throw a spotlight on the convergence of mental health and accent trauma by presenting a forensic case study of mass murder and suicide committed by an Asian-American, Jiverly Wong, who was traumatized by social exclusion and bullying, possibly due to his limited English proficiency in the form of non-native speech traits exhibited in his accent; and (4) to present evidence from neurolinguistic (f-MRI) studies of social pain caused by social exclusion. The discussion here is framed particularly in the context of intelligibility and interpretability of speech in cross-cultural communication through world Englishes and the wide-ranging negative reactions to people who speak English with a foreign accent. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Language: en