The effect of a humorous and a non-humorous self-disclosing comment on the evaluation of Non-native accented speakers in a hiring context.
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2023-01-09
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en
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The rapid increase in English as the Lingua Franca over the past couple of decades has increased the number of non-native English speakers. In previous research, it has been found that speaking with a non-native accent causes negative evaluations more often than speaking with a native accent. Naturally, the discriminatory bias towards NNE-accented speakers is also present in international business. The present study aimed to investigate whether a humorous and a non-humorous self-disclosing comment at the beginning of a job interview pitch decreased the negative evaluations in terms of perceived hireability, comprehensibility and attitudinal evaluations. 168 participants listened to a moderate or slightly accented French speaker in English who either made a humorous comment, a non-humorous comment or no comment concerning their accentedness before pitching for a position. After the audio fragment, the participants filled in a questionnaire concerning comprehensibility, attitudinal evaluations, and hireability. The results indicate that the self-disclosing comments had no significant effect on any of the dimensions. Accent strength only had a significantly negative effect on hireability and comprehensibility. Therefore, it can be concluded that the negative effect of speaking with a strong accent was found to be relatively minimal and that using a self-disclosing comment might not be an effective solution to the bias issue in job interviews. However, the current study does extend to previously unstudied non-native French-accented speakers of English in international business.
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