Many people come to Voice Synergy for help with accent reduction or accent softening to help with their career. Some people speak English as a second language and want help with pronunciation, others feel that their English accent isn’t good enough and want help with clarity and articulation.

On 19 February 2020, the following interview about the English accent took place on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. It’s about discrimination based on accent and how an MP and a barrister have overcome this problem. Here is the transcript of the interview conducted by BBC’s journalist and presenter, Jon Sopel, talking to Hashi Mohamed, barrister and Jess Phillips, MP. 

Hashi Mohamed: “Employers have admitted accent discrimination. So there IS a problem out there in terms of people discriminating based on accent. 

“So it seems to me, then, you are faced with a choice. Do you change the way you speak to try and get on, or do you say ‘Well actually, to hell with the rest of them, I will speak the way I want to speak’ and see what happens.

“And it seems to me that’s the fundamental choice for the individual as well as society. And it affects questions in a class system right through.”

Jon Sople: Jess Phillips, I can’t believe that anyone would discriminate on the basis of their accent without getting a clip round the ear.

Jess Phillips: “I don’t know, is the answer. Before working in Westminster, I worked in Birmingham in the Black Country where everybody spoke like me so they probably didn’t discriminate against me on those grounds. Had I had to sit for the Bar and wanted to be a lawyer in a London Chambers, maybe they would have done, in fact it sounds like… they absolutely would have. 

“My father who has a very strong Birmingham accent, when I was a kid, he used to tell me that the way I said my vowels meant that I wouldn’t get a job and he was obviously really concerned about it and used to say, you should try and pronounce your vowel sounds, ‘cause in Birmingham we said ‘oy’ instead of ‘I’ and he would pick me up on it. And actually, I really railed against him as I found it really irritating not for social justice reasons, just because I was a teenager.

“The reality I think for me, is my Birmingham accent has been one of the single greatest assets that I have.”

Jon Sople: “Why? Because it makes you different – because it makes you stand out, in the Westminster context?”

Jess Phillips: “In Westminster until more recently, two conservative members of parliament have been elected, they don’t represent Birmingham, but they have Birmingham accents, and some of the other Birmingham MPs also have Birmingham accents and their heritage comes from Kashmir as well, so their accent is slightly different. But I did feel like the only person who talked like me in Westminster –  and therefore the only person who talked like the people who I represent. I think that that does make me stand out. Also, it is a very, very quick technique when you need people to trust you in the context of being a constituency MP, when people are telling you a terrible crisis, people will trust you very immediately because you sound like them.” 

Jon Sople: “And Hashi, don’t you think that there is a sort of a turning… maybe now, to have a southern accent, maybe like the one I have, is perhaps a disadvantage? 

Hashi Mohamed: “It’s a very good point about trust and the way you speak, and I very much understand that, what Jess says there. But we also have to try and make a distinction between wholeheartedly changing your accent, or other factors such as what’s often referred to as accent softening, or registers and code switching, formal and informal language, but it is clear to me that if you are trying to get on, and the research I’ve looked into for my book, that depending on where you’re trying to go and what kind of career you’re trying to forge for yourself, people will judge you based on how you speak. 

“… There’s absolutely nothing terrible about looking at your future and deciding for yourself what you want to do. Now the BBC has a duty, I believe, to make sure that more regional accents are represented, because what that then does – is it changes the consciousness of people so that we can get to a place where people are not associating certain accents with pejorative things, which is something that Jess has talked about as well.”

Jon Sople: I would guess that Jess Phillips, if people kind of trust you, because of the way you speak, it’s because you seem authentic and isn’t that the danger that if you start trying to change your accent – and I could name some upper people at the Palace of Westminster who you feel have got extraordinarily pained accents because they have tried to make themselves posher than they are – you don’t trust them, because they seem inauthentic.”

Jess Phillips: “I think that is absolutely right, but to cut them some slack, I didn’t feel I ever had to do it. I’m much more of a ‘take me as you find me’ sort of person… If there are certain professions, you can’t say that – because people will think you’re stupid, one of the discriminations I have definitely suffered… is that we have to go a few more bars along the way to prove to people that we are not stupid because we have regional accents – and I get called stupid ALL the time. I put a lot of that down to the fact that I have a Birmingham accent. But, I couldn’t do it… I couldn’t change my accent even if I wanted to, I don’t think. I would struggle with it deeply.”

End of interview.

If you want help with your English accent or just want some help with speech clarity for interviews, please get in touch, we’ll be glad to help.