An Accent Could Be an Invitation to Bias : Discrimination: How a person talks could give bosses and others a chance to exercise prejudice, immigrant-rights advocates say.

As toddlers struggle toward the ability to speak, the first lessons are as much physical as intellectual. Breathing, positioning of tongue, teeth and lips, rhythm--these naturally occurring linguistic skills make the sounds that later will form words.

It is a sort of programming that carries over when a person learns a second language, and the result is an accent: speaking one language with the traits of another. Native English-speakers, for instance, must work to move their tongue to trill the “r” when learning Spanish, just as Chinese speakers struggle with the English “z” sound.

Southern California, with its rich ethnic diversity, is something of a test ground for accommodating accents. While thick accents enhance the region’s cosmopolitan flavor, they also can be perceived as an encumbrance, a roadblock to career advancement, an easy target for those who would ridicule or discriminate.

“Even though we are a melting pot, and we welcome everyone from all walks of life, if someone cannot make himself understood, that breeds prejudice,” said Lillian Glass, a speech and communication specialist who practices in Beverly Hills.

Examples abound. A Chinese-born accountant for a federal agency is told the way she speaks English is difficult to understand and will limit her professional opportunities. A Mexican-born salesman for a soft drink bottler is hired to court Spanish-speaking clients, but then believes he cannot move up in the company because of his accent. For a study, people posing as job seekers with foreign accents answer help-wanted ads by telephone but are told the posts are already filled; when unaccented English speakers call, they are invited for job interviews.

Many people, rather than endure the frustration, take specialized classes to soften or eliminate their accents and dialects--a field of speech instruction that has evolved into a fast-growing industry. Doctors, business executives and performers throughout Southern California spend hours with coaches to polish their locution.

Last week, the issue of accents in the workplace became more complicated. The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a ruling that allows an employer to deny a job or promotion to someone whose accent significantly interferes with his or her performance.

In the case, a 66-year-old Filipino was denied a job with the Hawaii Department of Motor Vehicles because, in the opinion of his interviewers, his heavily accented English was difficult to understand.

By refusing to hear the man’s appeal, the Supreme Court let stand a lower court’s ruling that said the DMV’s actions did not violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlaws job discrimination on the basis of national origin, race, sex or religion.

The Supreme Court decision raised many questions: How strong of an accent is considered detrimental to the performance of a job? Who can set an objective standard for how a person’s English should sound?

Immigrant-rights advocates decried the Supreme Court action, saying it gives employers subjective leeway to deny someone a job and then blame it on his or her accent. An employer could all too easily maintain that someone’s English is incomprehensible merely as a cover for more entrenched discrimination, the advocates say.

The danger, said the critics, is that employers might use accents as a screening mechanism: They’ll simply refuse to hire people with accents they don’t like.

“Employers will see this as a green light to discriminate,” said Linda E. Mitchell of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights of Los Angeles. “We are legitimizing discrimination in our society.”

Accents, of course, are not limited to the foreign-born. Regions of the country, such as the New York area or the South, have distinctive accents. Blacks and U.S.-born Chicanos may speak with certain accents or favor particular dialects. But most problems seem to involve immigrants.

A 33-year-old Upland woman who was born in China and moved to California in 1970 said in an interview that she fears her job is in jeopardy because of a supervisor’s reaction to her accent. She has worked as an accountant and auditor for a federal regulatory agency--a job that requires oral presentations to managerial groups--during the last 4 1/2 years.

After several positive evaluations, she said, she is now being denied a promised promotion. Her supervisor has blamed the “impact” of her accent on her communications skills.

“When I came here (to the United States), I did not speak a word of English,” she said. “I worked doubly hard, I learned doubly hard. . . . I do have an accent; I never denied that. (But) if they felt I had such a problem, why was it never put as an issue? . . . I never had a complaint.”

The woman, who speaks with a thick accent but is generally intelligible, asked that her name not be published because she is in a legal battle with the federal agency. A grievance filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was rejected, but she is appealing.

Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, said his organization has received similar, informal complaints from several Chinese-born engineers who work at some of Southern California’s aerospace firms and believe their accents are being used to relegate them to mid-level positions.

“Our concern is that anytime a person has an accent, an employer can use that to deny a promotion or a job,” Kwoh said. “Los Angeles has so many different groups and is so diverse now that if we play favorites, if we start choosing the accent we like as the standard, . . . it gets very dangerous.”

Mitchell, of the rights coalition, is counseling a Mexican-born salesman for a major soft drink company. Hired in part because he spoke Spanish and could work with Spanish-speaking businesses, he now feels his accent is being used to deny him advancement in the company, Mitchell said.

In a study conducted last year by the Humane Immigration Rights coalition and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, five pairs of people posing as job applicants answered help-wanted ads placed in local newspapers. In each pair, a person speaking English with a Spanish accent answered the ad first, followed by the partner, a less-qualified applicant who spoke unaccented English.

According to the study, 20% of the accented callers were not considered for the job, but their less-qualified unaccented partners were. In several cases, the accented applicant was told the job was filled but the unaccented applicant, calling later, was told the job was available.

In nearly one-third of the cases, the accented speaker was treated less favorably, the study found.

In California, numerous large companies and government agencies said that while they do not consider national origin or ethnic background when examining a job applicant, they do make it clear that the applicants’ “ability to communicate” is a factor in whether they get hired--especially when the position is one that requires talking to the public.

“What we look at is (the applicant’s) knowledge, skill and ability to do that job,” said Kathleen Flynn, a spokeswoman for Pacific Bell. “Part of that ability is to be understood by our customers.”

At a state bureaucracy like the Department of Motor Vehicles, hiring someone for a front-office job who could not communicate clearly “would cause more problems than the hiring would be worth,” DMV spokesman Bill Gengler said.

“We need to have people who can communicate clearly with the public,” he said. “Vehicle registration and licensing . . . are a very serious thing. If the employee cannot communicate with the public, then the public is going to be shortchanged.”

At Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Fontana, administrators offer special “accent-reduction” tutoring to foreign-born physicians as a way to help them communicate better with their patients.

About 45 doctors have passed through the program in the last four years, spokeswoman Gail Henderson-Peter said.

In one session last week, an internist born in Bangkok diligently practiced the “th” sound, repeating, “the, this, them.” He stumbled later over the word “tests,” the juxtaposition of two “S’s” and a “T” posing something of a tongue-twister.

Under the guidance of speech specialist Ruth Forman, the Thai doctor, who has lived in California for 13 years, was taught to speak more slowly, enunciate more clearly and project his words, even his own name.

Forman, director of the Sherman Oaks-based Communication Enhancement Inc., said many of the difficulties in communication are directly tied to cultural differences, such as eye contact and projection.

She said in some Asian cultures it is considered impolite “to open (the lips) and project.” In contrast, others, such as Russians and Germans, sometimes project so forcefully that they must be toned down, she said.

At the session at Kaiser, some of Forman’s students seemed to have special trouble with one word in particular: “physician.”

One of the Taiwanese doctors, who has lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, said the coaching has made him more confident. “I (seem) more sincere to my patients,” he said.

Forman says the goal of her program is not to rob the foreign-born of their culture, nor to eliminate accents in an effort to homogenize the way Southern California speaks.

“In reality, you don’t ever get rid of the accent,” she said. “What this program does is reduce the accent so that communication is not a problem. . . . Each culture brings something special to this country. I hope that never fades.”