Gender, dialect, and taboo vocabulary in court

In case (like me) you haven't been following the murder trial of Karen Read, this article provides the background: Kim Stelloh, "Karen Read is accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend. Here's what we know about the murder trial", NBC News 6/7/2024. The current media fever focuses on the testimony of (Massachusetts State Police investigator) Michael Proctor, forced on the witness stand to read some text messages that hit a trifecta of gender, regional, and vocabulary biases:

Proctor spells c u n t and AJ objects, Auntie Bev said they are your words, so use them.

Friend – "Is she hot"

Proctor – "She's a whack job cunt, yes she's a babe, weird Fall River accent though, no ass" pic.twitter.com/Vdx3wY9uPW

— FreeKarenRead (@Free_Karen_Read) June 10, 2024

I didn't know what a "Fall River accent" is, weird or not — but Google offers some fragments of information (larded with varying amounts of bias…), e.g.:

"How to speak Fall River" "Do Bristol County accents sound more like Boston or NYC to you?" "Massachusetts Fall River Accent" "DION: We speak Fall River, not English, 07-28-08"

A few past posts on English-language accent prejudice:

"Lazy mouths vs. lazy minds", 11/26/2003 "The beauty of Brummie", 7/28/2004 "Those sleepy, slurry southerners", 11/27/2006 "Whodunit sociolinguistics", 7/11/2016 "What makes an accent good or bad?", 11/17/2020 "Accent, power, and persuasion", 3/6/2022