Stereotypes

Fill in the blank: The ice is melting at the [ ]

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You can read a Danish translation of this article here. 

There is a good chance that the word poles (or should I say pøules?) came immediately to mind. The Danish politician Villy Søvndal’s speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009 became an instant meme because of the way he spoke English: with a (strong?) Danish accent.

People being judged (typically negatively) as a result of the accent they speak is not an uncommon phenomenon. Quite the opposite, in fact. Similar stories are found elsewhere. In 2016 Angela Rayner (UK Shadow Education Secretary) received abusive emails after an appearance on Channel 4 because she spoke with her native Northern British accent. Check The Accentism Project … ↪

Does he say he twice as often as she? Women, men and language

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“Hvem sa hva? Kvinner, menn og språk” (English translation of the title: ”Who said what? Women, men and language”) by Helene Uri was published in Norway in 2018 and won the prestigious Brage Prize the same year. The book is about gender differences in language and language use, but it is just as much about the differential treatment and outright discrimination of primarily women, which most of the gender differences are a result of. The book is a mixed bag of observations, but still represents one of the best Scandinavian books on the topic.

Helene Uri (b. 1964) is a Norwegian linguist and author. In her 2008 novel “De besste blant os” (English translation of the … ↪