Counteracting accent dIscrimination pRactiCes in Education

CIRCE addresses the issue of accent discrimination in the school environment. Accent discrimination is one of the most widespread and resistant forms of discrimination linked to the activation of prejudices based exclusively on how people sound. CIRCE thus aims at achieving increased awareness of the phenomenon and more tolerance towards accent variation, which are both key to safeguarding the pluralistic, multilingual and multicultural European identity.

CIRCE will involve participants in discovering the mechanisms of accent discrimination by implementing the following activities: i) assessment of the nature and severity of linguistic prejudice through the observation of reactions to accent variation and of the language attitudes emerging in secondary education across EU countries; ii) production of educational resources to counteract linguistic prejudice and engage students in the promotion of linguistic diversity.

The project’s expected outcomes include i) increased TOLERANCE towards non-native and non-standard accents within the three main target groups (teachers, secondary school students and university students); ii) greater AWARENESS of issues related to linguicism and accent discrimination within the general public; iii) INCLUSION of the topic of linguicism and accent discrimination in school and university curricula.