Thank you Jen Benford, Mother Hood, Claire Machado, Stephen Scheidell, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anna | how to boss AI and Cristina! Accent, Identity, and the Cost of Linguistic PerformanceWith Anna from Anna | how to boss AI and Cristina from Cristina This week I sat down with Anna and Cristina — two non-native English speakers working in professional environments — to talk about something the research names but rarely makes personal: what it actually costs to perform your language at work every day.We covered a few things.The invisible tax. The monitoring, adjusting, and self-editing that non-native speakers do constantly — often invisibly to the people around them..Why the system produces this. What linguistics calls prestige dialect bias, indexicality, and linguistic capital — kept brief, because the point is what it does to people, not what it’s called.AI as an accessibility tool. Anna and Cristina’s argument — which I find persuasive — is that AI isn’t just a productivity tool for non-native speakers. It’s an accessibility tool. That reframe matters. So does the question it opens up: whose standard is AI helping people conform to? The concept of slowing down and taking control of how we interact was very much a reflection of us all being BIG fans of #SlowAI Dr Sam Illingworth The recording is above. Anna and Cristina’s original piece is linked below — it’s worth reading alongside. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thestrategiclinguist.substack.com/subscribe

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