language shame
Heritage speech stigma
Language shame is embarrassment or insecurity about how one speaks—whether due to accent, dialect, vocabulary, grammar, or fluency in a second language.
It often stems from social stigma attached to certain speech patterns: She felt language shame about her Southern accent in corporate meetings.
The term appears in discussions of immigrant experience, regional identity, and linguistic discrimination.
Language shame can cause people to code-switch, abandon their native tongue, or avoid speaking altogether.
- embarrassmentSelf-conscious unease
- accentRegional speech pattern
- foreignFrom another nation
- immigrantOne who resettles abroad
- immigrant experienceNewcomer's adjustment to another country
first generation · dialect · tongue · mocking · ridicule · silence · hiding · code-switching · assimilation · mother tongue · broken · broken English · fluency · heritage · identity · belonging · outsider · pronunciation
language, shame, languages, linguistic, linguistics, linguist, lingual, bilingual, multilingual