Language Discrimination

"Language Discrimination"

What is the Language Discrimination?

Discrimination by language occurs when a person is treated differently because of his native language or other characteristics of his way of speaking. For example, an employee could be subjected to language discrimination if the place of employment has a "speak only English" rule but the employee’s primary language is not English. Also, the employee may be a victim of language discrimination if he or she is treated worse than other employees for speaking English with an accent, or if the employee is informed that he or she does not qualify for a position because of a lack of ability to speak English. Outside the employment context, language discrimination could also occur if a person were denied access to government services or business because he or she does not speak English.

Language Discrimination is illegal?

Many courts and government agencies consider language discrimination as a form of discrimination based on race or national origin, that are prohibited by well-established laws make it illegal for employers to discriminate against an employee because of his or her national origin. ("National origin" refers to the country from which that person or his or her ancestors came). But since the primary language spoken by a person is intimately linked to the place from which that person or his family came, discrimination by using that language, or by characteristics related to that language, is basically the same as being discriminated against on the basis of national origin.

Discrimination based on an accent also violates an employee’s civil rights. Generally, the standard applied in these cases is that the employee’s accent has to "interrupt the performance of the work in a considerable manner" to justify any adverse action. In other words, an employee’s accent must have a significantly negative effect on the employee’s ability to do his job. In addition, the employer must evaluate the accent objectively and equitably. Often there are subtle prejudices against some accents more than others.

Discrimination by language, accent, etc, is something very silly and this aspect is already less taken into account today, there are people who are still like that with people who are not native or something like that but it is already less compared to before.