Could our PM have a Brummie accent for example? The English language is full of a wide variety of local accents and all the baggage that goes with it.

‘‘Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?’ go the lyrics in a song from ‘My Fair Lady’ an adaptation of ‘Pygmalian’ by George Bernard Shaw. ‘The moment he talks he makes another Englishman despise him,’ continues the song.

English accents are loaded with history and the speaker carries the baggage that is associated with the accent whenever they speak. Phonetic diversity matters, and the way we speak is a badge, for better or for worse, according to Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent. With his northern accent, he was told in his early career that ‘He wouldn’t get on air with an accent like that’. How wrong he proved his critic to be.

All our speaking sounds are made with air that has left the lungs and is shaped and formed by our articulators – our tongue, our teeth, our lips and our soft palate. There is no ‘posh’ or ‘unposh’ switch to alter the natural flow of speech. Accent is part of a social meaning that we have attached to the way words are pronounced. It makes a person sound well-educated or not; posh or not. We know that certain accents are perceived as more or less prestigious or sound more or less educated.

Experiments on how accents are perceived have been conducted over the years and there is a consistency in the accent that come at the top. Traditionally it is called Received Pronunciation, or RP, which is high in the level of status. However, if this experiment is repeated with people who don’t have English as their first language, they don’t tend to have that same reaction, they don’t have the ‘baggage’ of the English speaker and listener. Therefore, a Geordie accent or a Liverpool accent wouldn’t be immediately scored ‘lower’ ranking by this group.

Power and accents.

Many people don’t think they have an accent, but every single person has an accent. Those people who say they don’t speak with an accent tend to come from the South East of England because this accent is still perceived as a ‘standard’ way of speaking. The reason it is perceived as a standard way of speaking is that is where the seat of power – London, Oxford and Cambridge – traditionally has been. This is the variety of accent that has traditionally had the power behind it and those speaking in this way don’t regard themselves as having a particular accent.

“The way you speak is important both in your job and in your social life,” said the late Jack de Manio, former presenter of the Today programme from the BBC’s Radio Four. “As soon as you open your mouth, people start to form opinions about you.”

“You have to have the right accent for the right region, or you won’t be chosen as a candidate for parliament”, said late British politician and author, Sir Gerald Kaufman. Is it ‘All politics is local’? or it is, ‘All politics is vocal’?

This is so interesting, because communication is most effective when the speaker and listener have as few barriers to their communication as possible. Reduction of ‘noise’ or interference with accent and the prejudices that are thrown up by association, is still a wise move for a speaker. A vowel sound that is pronounced differently from the listeners’ own accent, draws attention to that accent, whether it is regional or RP, rather than to the content of the sentence.

It’s important that the words we speak are understood correctly, regardless of accent, so to be clear and unambiguous is paramount.

Are you keen to speak with a UK regional accent, multi-cultural urban British English or a non-regional specific accent / Received Pronunciation? For help with your accent or dialect, for work or performance, please get in touch for a free consultation.

Inspired by Chris Mason’s article.