JUDY WOODRUFF: We have all
heard of racial profiling, but
what about accent profiling?

Hernan Diaz is the
associate director of
the Hispanic Institute
at Columbia University,

and his first novel was just
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Those are certainly
accomplishments, and yet
he possesses something
else that sets him

apart.

That's tonight's In
My Humble Opinion.

HERNAN DIAZ, Author,
"In the Distance": I
work at a university in
New York with a large

population of
international students.

Walking around campus the
other day, I was perplexed to
see flyers advertising accent

reduction or even
accent elimination.

Having been born in Argentina,
grown up in Sweden, and spent
most of my life in the United

States, I have, to some
degree, a foreign accent
in every language I speak.

Something in my Spanish
makes taxi drivers in Buenos
Aires ask me where I'm from.

In Swedish, my accent is
very slight, but I have the
vocabulary of a 12-year-old.

In my early 20s, I lived
in London for a couple of
years, which left its mark.

But the fact is, I got
English almost as a
gift, through Swedish.

And there is still a
Scandinavian lilt in there.

Does my accent need correcting?

I don't think so.

To sound like who, exactly?

A native speaker?

What would that even mean?

Looking at accent-reduction
classes online, the third hit
I got wasn't aimed at Eastern

European or South
American immigrants.

It actually read, "Want to get
rid of your New York accent?"

An accent can be a stigma,
even within native speakers
of the same language.

These variations, determined
by geography, class, and race,
are always identified with

stereotypes, and fleeing from
one means embracing another.

In England a Russian
writer may adopt an
upper-crust British accent.

In California, a Texan
actor may aspire to a San
Fernando Valley cadence.

Even though everybody
has an accent, there
certainly is such a thing
as accent discrimination.

Most of us have either suffered
or witnessed it at some point.

I can easily tell when I'm not
being understood or when someone
is underscoring a difference

in pronunciation just to show
me my place, because accent
discrimination is, in the end,

all about place, who
belongs and who doesn't.

An accent is the echo of one
language or tone in another.

I, for one, enjoy these ghostly
presences of something strange
in a familiar environment.

They are a reminder of the fact
that language doesn't belong
to anyone, not even to its

native speakers.

Language is shared.

It is, in principle, a
space where everyone is
welcome and cooperates
toward mutual comprehension.

And the very fact that there
are accents in the first place,
the fact that we can still

understand each other
through all the differences,
is the most conclusive
proof of the hospitality

at the heart of every language.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Pulitzer
Prize nominee Hernan Diaz.