The Gender of Voice: Pronunciation, Accent, and Women English Teachers in Southern Italy

Carla Bottiglieri, Vocational Training Institute, Lagonegro, Italy

Introduction

In English language teaching, pronunciation, speech, and listening are often approached as technical components of linguistic competence, frequently isolated from broader questions of identity, power, and social positioning. However, spoken language is never neutral. Voice, accent, rhythm, and intelligibility are deeply embedded in social meanings and are constantly evaluated within educational contexts. For teachers, particularly women, the act of speaking English in the classroom is not only pedagogical but also performative: it involves being heard, assessed, and legitimized.

For women English teachers in Southern Italy, teaching pronunciation extends far beyond phonetic accuracy or segmental features. It becomes a continuous negotiation of authority, credibility, and a sense of belonging. Their voices are shaped by local cultural expectations, global linguistic norms, and gendered assumptions about who is entitled to speak with authority. In this sense, pronunciation teaching represents a highly visible and emotionally charged dimension of classroom practice.

Southern Italy offers a particularly revealing context for examining these dynamics. In a region where traditional gender roles remain influential and exposure to English outside formal education is limited, the English classroom often serves as the primary space where spoken English is encountered. As a result, pronunciation becomes a salient marker of professional competence, and the teacher’s voice carries symbolic weight. Female educators frequently navigate expectations related not only to linguistic accuracy but also to tone, confidence, and perceived legitimacy. This article explores how women English teachers in Southern Italy experience and negotiate pronunciation teaching, focusing on accent, listening practices, and spoken interaction as sites where gender, identity, and pedagogy intersect.

Gender, Voice, and Teacher Identity in the Pronunciation Classroom

Teacher identity plays a crucial role in shaping how pronunciation is taught and interpreted in the classroom. As Norton (2013) argues, language education is inseparable from issues of power, investment, and social positioning. In pronunciation teaching, these dynamics are particularly visible. The teacher’s voice is constantly present, constantly audible, and implicitly compared to against idealized models of “good” English.

In Southern Italian classrooms, female teachers often develop professional authority through relational and dialogic practices rather than through hierarchical control. Such an approach has significant implications for pronunciation pedagogy. Rather than positioning themselves as unquestionable models of correctness, many women educators emphasize process over perfection, encouraging experimentation, self-monitoring, and mutual listening. Authority is constructed through competence and care rather than through distance.

Care-oriented pedagogies, which are frequently associated with feminine teaching styles, are characterized by pronunciation practices that prioritize emotional safety, trust, and sustained interaction. These approaches challenge traditional transmission models of pronunciation teaching, where authority is tied to native-like performance and error correction is unidirectional. Instead, authority emerges through responsiveness, empathy, and the ability to create spaces where learners feel confident using their voices, even when their pronunciation diverges from standardized norms. In this way, pronunciation teaching becomes a key site for the construction of teacher identity.

Accent, Native-Speakerism, and Gendered Expectations

Accent remains one of the most sensitive and contested aspects of pronunciation teaching. For non-native English-speaking teachers, particularly women, accent can become a site of heightened self-surveillance and professional vulnerability. Holliday’s (2006) concept of native-speakerism helps explain how idealized native norms continue to shape perceptions of legitimacy in ELT, often privileging accent over pedagogical expertise.

In Southern Italy, where English is strongly associated with social mobility, international access, and professional advancement, accent is frequently perceived as a marker of authority. Female teachers report feeling pressure to sound “neutral,” “international,” or “native-like,” particularly when working with adult learners, parents, or institutional stakeholders. These pressures are not gender-neutral. Women’s voices are often more readily scrutinized, corrected, or evaluated, reflecting broader societal patterns in which female speech is judged more harshly and held to higher standards.

At the same time, many educators actively resist these ideologies. By foregrounding intelligibility over imitation and by openly discussing accent diversity with learners, women teachers reposition themselves as legitimate global users of English. Drawing on Canagarajah’s (2013) work on translingual practice, they frame accent not as a deficit but as an expression of multilingual identity. In doing so, pronunciation teaching becomes an act of ideological negotiation, challenging both linguistic and gender hierarchies embedded in ELT.

Listening as Pedagogy: Gendered Practices of Attention and Care

Listening is often conceptualized in ELT as a receptive skill, assessed through comprehension questions and discrete tasks. However, in pronunciation teaching, listening also functions as a pedagogical stance and an ethical orientation. Female educators in Southern Italy often emphasize listening as a relational practice, focusing on students’ voices, hesitations, emotional responses, and evolving confidence in spoken English.

This approach reshapes pronunciation instruction in meaningful ways. Error correction becomes dialogic rather than corrective; feedback is negotiated rather than imposed. Teachers listen not only for phonological accuracy but also for effort, risk-taking, and communicative intent. Such practices are particularly significant in contexts where learners may experience anxiety, insecurity, or shame related to their spoken English.

From a gender perspective, these listening-centered pedagogies challenge dominant models that equate authority with control and correction. Instead, they align with research suggesting that effective pronunciation teaching requires sensitivity, trust, and sustained interaction (Norton & De Costa, 2018). Listening, in this sense, is not secondary to speech but foundational to it, shaping how learners perceive their own voices and their right to speak.

Local Contexts, Global Voices

Southern Italy occupies a marginal position within global ELT discourses, yet it offers valuable insights into how pronunciation teaching operates in linguistically and socially constrained environments. Limited exposure to English outside the classroom means that the teacher’s voice often serves as the main, and sometimes only, example of spoken English for learners. As a result, educators, especially women, carry an extra burden of responsibility because their professional identities are closely tied to their verbal communication skills.

Institutions such as Centro Studi New Beginning in Lagonegro demonstrate how women educators navigate these constraints by localizing global frameworks including the CEFR and Trinity College London syllabi. Pronunciation instruction is tailored to learners’ realities, striking a balance between international intelligibility standards and respect for local linguistic identities. Through this process, global norms are not simply transmitted but reinterpreted, negotiated, and humanized, thereby reinforcing the role of the teacher as a mediator rather than a gatekeeper.

Conclusion

Examining pronunciation, accent, and listening through a gendered lens reveals that spoken language teaching is deeply embedded in social relations. For women English teachers in Southern Italy, teaching pronunciation is not only about producing sounds accurately but about creating conditions in which voices—both teachers’ and learners’—can be heard without fear of delegitimization.

By resisting native-speakerist ideologies, emphasizing intelligibility, and foregrounding listening as a pedagogical approach, these educators contribute to more equitable and inclusive spoken-language classrooms. Their experiences highlight pronunciation teaching as a central site where power, identity, and voice converge. Recognizing this has important implications for how speech, pronunciation, and listening are conceptualized within TESOL, suggesting that technical competence and social awareness must be addressed together.

References

Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. Routledge.

Holliday, A. (2006). Native-speakerism. ELT Journal, 60(4), 385–387. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccl030Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation (2nd ed.). Multilingual Matters.

Norton, B., & De Costa, P. I. (2018). Research tasks on identity in language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 51(1), 90–112. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444817000325

Sunderland, J. (2015). Language, gender and teaching. Routledge.

Carla Bottiglieri is a TESOL- and DipTESOL-certified English teacher and the founder of Centro Studi New Beginning in Italy. Her work focuses on pronunciation, teacher identity, and equity in spoken language education, with particular attention to non-native English-speaking teachers and marginalized educational contexts.