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

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

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

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

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apart.

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That's tonight's In 
My Humble Opinion.

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

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population of 
international students.

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

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reduction or even 
accent elimination.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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And there is still a 
Scandinavian lilt in there.

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Does my accent need correcting?

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I don't think so.

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To sound like who, exactly?

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A native speaker?

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What would that even mean?

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

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European or South 
American immigrants.

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

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

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

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stereotypes, and fleeing from 
one means embracing another.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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native speakers.

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Language is shared.

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

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

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

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at the heart of every language.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Pulitzer 
Prize nominee Hernan Diaz.