If you speak with a Northern, regional or working-class accent in Britain, you may still be judged before you’ve even finished your sentence.
A new book by The University of Manchester’s Dr Alex Baratta has revealed how deeply ingrained accent prejudice remains in British society – from classrooms to job interviews – and why it’s time to challenge it.
Baratta’s new book, Putting an Accent on British Accents, explores what he calls the ‘social reality’ of accents – the knee-jerk judgments people make about others based on their speech. These can include assumptions about intelligence, trustworthiness, class and even personality.
But the ‘linguistic reality’ tells a very different story.
“There is nothing inherent in any accent,” Baratta argues. “No sound can ever be ‘stupid’, ‘sexy’ or ‘unprofessional’ – these are social judgements we attach to speech, not properties of the speech itself.”
One teacher reported that his interview for a PGCE course was nearly terminated unless he modified his Rossendale accent, which was deemed ‘unprofessional’ for teaching English.
A secondary school Art teacher from Croydon was instructed to write the word ‘water’ with a capital ‘T’ to discourage pupils from using a glottal stop – a common feature of many British accents.
Another teacher from Nottingham, working in primary phonics in the South of England, was told it would be ‘best to go back to where you come from’ if she could not adopt Southern pronunciation.
These examples, Baratta argues, show that accent bias is not only persistent, but can directly affect careers and opportunities.
A particular pronunciation can trigger assumptions about class, education, behaviour and even lifestyle, and these assumptions can then shape how individuals are treated in everyday life.
In this way, accent becomes a form of social inequality that often goes unrecognised.
Putting an Accent on British Accents by Dr Alex Baratta is published by Peter Lang and is available in hardcover and digital formats.
