I recently read “How You Say It” by Katherine D. Kinzler, professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, specializing in the relationship between language and socialization. The book is about the psychology behind speech.  

Linguistic bias is a form of bias we don’t hear that much about. It is the tendency to value one way of speaking over another, something that appears at a very young age. Babies hear their mother’s voice in the womb, and so are born conditioned to the sound of their mother’s native tongue over other languages. 

Interestingly, even the accents we hear in movies at a young age can affect us. It was quite common in American-made movies to have the “bad guys” speak with non-American accents, including the English accent! Just watch the original Star Wars movies and most of Empire spoke with an English accent (Darth Vader appears to be the exception)! And we have seen the same thing in British movies too, albeit with more exotic accents, take Blofeld from James Bond for example.

Thankfully film and TV show makers appear to be much more aware of this now.