By Eric King-
Working class Birmingham and Afro Caribbean accents are right at the bottom of an “enduring hierarchy of accents” in the UK, according to a study led by Queen Mary University.
The study by the elite University is aimed at examining current attitudes to English regional, class, and ethnic accents.
According to the research, non-standard working-class and ethnic accents tend to be penalised, while middle-class “standard” speech was more highly rated and considered “prestigious”.
A study sample of over a thousand members of the public were asked to listen to and evaluate mock interview answers spoken in five different accents, including Received Pronunciation, Estuary English, Multicultural London English, General Northern English, and Urban West Yorkshire English.
The research was aimed at understanding the potential impact of a person’s accent on their career opportunities and overall life experiences in the modern world. The study examined if people were biased, positively or negatively, towards different accents and whether accent bias affected a person’s judgement in a professional setting.
According to the study, the most prejudicial demographic came from older people of higher social class living in south east England. Multicultural London English, which is generally associated with young working-class people from ethnic minority backgrounds, received lower ratings than the other accents almost consistently among respondents.
“Accent bias exists,” said Erez Levon, Professor of Sociolinguistics and Principal Investigator on the project said.
“We all have automatic associations with particular voices. Bias becomes discrimination when we allow these associations to govern our judgement of unrelated traits such as intelligence or competence.”
This group was found to be able to concentrate on the quality of the answer given rather than the accent it was given in.
Dr Dominic Watt, from the University of York’s Department of Language and Linguistic Science, said: “The results of the study give grounds for optimism, in that although accent-based prejudice seems to be all around us in this country, it seems to be possible for people in positions of power to put these biases to one side when it really counts.”