Short Essay: Ethnocentrism and Bisaya Accent

Ethnocentrism is defined as viewing someone’s culture as the best and judging other

cultures as inferior in comparison to it... (continuation on next page)

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 Ethnocentrism is defined as viewing someone’s culture as the best and judging other

cultures as inferior in comparison to it. This is very much rampant in the contemporary times.

This exists in different forms and is usually experienced by people in their everyday living. In the

Philippines, one of the issues that portrays ethnocentrism is the dominance of Tagalog people

over Visayan people wherein the Bisaya accent has been mocked because of some variations

in pronunciation when Visayan people speak Tagalog. Accents of Filipinos from different

regions vary in pronunciation and modulation of the voice in speaking. However, these

differences are not tolerated or understood because of ignorance, prejudices and negative

stereotypes of people towards anyone whose culture or behavior is unfamiliar or dissimilar.

They are not mindful when it comes to creating harsh judgments on a daily basis. This is a

major issue that challenge generations. We are not taught directly to humiliate Bisaya accent,

but we learned it by example anyway, such as in radio stations and social media. This is the

main reason why accent-shaming is still prevalent despite the fact that past beliefs on cultural

superiority and inferiority are widely rejected.