How did Melania Trump master English so well that her accent completely disappeared?
Listening to Melania Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016, I came away pretty impressed. First, it takes guts to get up and speak in front of a crowd, especially when English is not your native language. But her debut, as it were, went beyond this feat. If communicating a message was the goal, Melania Trump had no problem at all: she was easy to understand and even attempted a dip into a well of emotion — a very difficult task, especially in public — throughout her speech. Did her accent get in her way? Not really. One could argue that she could have gone over even better had she considered accent reduction beforehand. But that should be Melania Trump’s decision alone — no one else's.
As we all know, though, her speech was notable for more than its delivery. The exchange that followed the revelations that Mrs. Trump had reportedly plagiarized passages from a previous speech made by Michelle Obama was heated, put mildly. (On Twitter alone, there were 443 tweets using the word “bitch.”) But the comments weren’t confined to Melania’s actions; the scandal stirred deep antipathy to Melania herself, with commenters calling her out as “dumb,” “stupid” and “barely able to speak English” — an unfair assessment. Should she have lifted parts of Michelle Obama’s speech? No. But the negative comments, including those about her accent, were about something else.
Interestingly, some of the most caustic comments mirrored the values which the Trump campaign embraces: negativity towards immigrants, or anyone who is different or “foreign.” During the course of the Republican leadership campaign, Trump has proposed building a wall between the USA and Mexico, poked fun at accents, and even suggested that, because of cultural or religious reasons, Khizr Khan’s wife wasn’t allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention. When you make being foreign-born something loathsome, then you have to accept the consequences. As his stalwart supporter, Melania Trump, who was born outside the USA, has been involved in creating an atmosphere of intolerance toward anything different — including accents. Including hers.
If Melania Trump becomes the First Lady, we will likely hear more of what she thinks about immigrants — a group of people to which she belongs. Will she continue to support her husband’s reactionary stance against foreigners? We can only guess. But this seems clear: with over 42 million immigrants in the USA as of 2015, Americans will have to learn to accept and embrace diversity— including those who, like Mrs. Trump, come to the U.S. speaking with a pronounced accent. Will the Trumps figure this out? Or will they continue on their anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner path? The only thing that’s certain is that this topic isn’t going away anytime soon.
