Language prejudice sounds pretty bad on paper, how could you judge someone on how they speak? In reality it’s something everyone does, maybe not in a maliciously negative way. But in very surface level ways, as the HuffPost artical mentioned even by someones accent our brain goes on to make an assumption on who they are, and how we feel about them. Which is where the whole “make a good first impression” kinda came from. Because this is something everyone does unintentionally, we have a our own bias on what we like to hear and what we don’t. And because we are human we need to share our opinion which can impact the ways others think. For me personally I’ve had this listening to podcasts, for example when a host shares they may hate the sound of a Bostonian accent. At first I’ll think “eh its’s alright” but then they will follow with a bias impression of the accent which then makes me think “yea they’re right, that is annoying”. So yes, my own language bias has been impacted by someones else’s opinion.
I agree that other peoples’ biases can influence us. This is one of the reasons we are studying language and power. We need to be aware of biases and prejudices that sneak into our thinking. We live in a community that is homogenous. Do you think you might encounter obvious incidents of language prejudice in larger and more diverse communities?