The language of blame: Exploring the effects of non-native accents on post-accident blame attributions

Abstract

This peer commentary investigates how individuals assign blame to non-native supervisors after an accident where an employee suffers a workplace accident in a multilingual organization. Extending research presented in the focal article by Obenauer and Kalsher's (2023), the authors propose that supervisors with non-native accents are likely to be blamed after an accident they tried to prevent due to stereotypes and increased cognitive effort in processing accented speech. The authors discuss scenarios where, even when supervisors effectively conduct a verbal safety briefing warning employees about possible dangers, they are not excepted from blame. Additionally, the authors suggest that biases against non-native supervisors may extend to native speakers with strong regional or foreign sounding accents. Moving forward, this commentary encourages more nuanced theorizing around non-native accents and more research differentiating between various Latin/Hispanic accents.

Keywords

• Non-native accents
• Language fluency
• Blame attributions
• Supervisor safety communication