Britain’s ongoing fascination with class is revealed by the way radio audiences perceive accents in The Archers, new Manchester research shows.
Ambridge residents considered to speak with a ‘posh’ voice – such as Brian, Jennifer, Jim and Lynda – are deemed to be unfriendly, while the opposite applies to Eddie and Clarrie Grundy, a study has found.
However, non-native English speakers do not automatically make the same connection, demonstrating the peculiarly British association between accent and social status.
In a preliminary study, linguist Dr Rob Drummond,Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, played short, content-neutral clips of The Archers characters to non-listeners of the BBC Radio 4 drama and asked them to assign character traits to the voices they heard.
Dr Drummond, said: “The results showed that many of the accents evoked clear characteristics. This is no surprise, but it does reinforce the power of accent in creating specific identities.
“There is nothing objectively ‘posh’ about Brian’s accent, it simply carries that association in our society. Listeners without English as a first language did not hear Brian as particularly posh, and instead offered a wide variety of interpretations about his character.
“Non-native English speakers grew up with a different set of cultural and linguistic associations, and have arguably not learned those that exist here in our very status-conscious society.”
Dr Drummond’s research focuses on the importance of language and accent in constructing identity, alongside characteristics such as the way we dress and behave.
He said: “Television and film use voice and accent a great deal in the creation of character – ‘villains’ in American films, for example, often have a British accent.
“However, radio drama relies on accent even more heavily in the process of characterisation, as they do not have the visuals to fall back on.
“Writers of The Archers must be aware of this, as the characters use very broad, almost stereotypical accents. For instance, the Grundys use a generic ‘regional’ accent in order to indicate a rural, ‘low status’.”
