Accent bias
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"Why tackling accent bias matters at work: Wall Street banks and big City law firms among employers addressing potential discrimination" by Pilita Clark, Financial Times (7/16/24).
If the polls are to be believed, the UK parliament is going to look quite different after the July 4 general election. But there might also be a big change in the way it sounds.
The last election in 2019 produced a parliament dominated by Conservative party MPs and 69 per cent of them spoke RP, Received Pronunciation, or BBC English, the accent long deemed the most prestigious in the UK.
Among the Conservatives’ Labour party opponents, however, only 37 per cent spoke like this.
With some polls predicting a Labour landslide, the halls of Westminster could soon ring with very different sounds.
Yet one aspect of parliament will probably stay the same. If history is a guide, the new crop of MPs will still sound posher than the people who elected them, because less than 10 per cent of the British population speak RP.
Is this not partly the inevitable result of demographic change?
[Devyani Sharma] is one of the academics behind Accent Bias Britain, a research project set up in 2017 to examine accent discrimination in the workplace and she has some unexpectedly good news.
Employers may still judge the owner of a working class accent more harshly than an RP speaker but the project’s work suggests the impact fades once people are made aware of the problem.
More saliently, the number of top employers asking for accent bias training is increasing to the point that Sharma, who does corporate workshops based on the project’s research, is struggling to keep up with demand.
When I spoke to her, she had just done one session for a big Wall Street bank and another for a top City law firm — not her first. The civil service, consultancies and charities have also made requests, which have lately come in weekly.
To what degree, though, are these shifts in attitude also due to social activism, even on the part of the academics doing research on them?
The training tools Sharma and her colleagues have developed are not complicated. They show how we naturally make snap judgments about one another, and our respective social classes, as soon we hear someone speak.
The accent ratings are not what I would have expected:
Received Pronunciation is still by far the highest rated accent. French, Scottish, New Zealand and Australian accents all make it to the top 10, while Birmingham is rated lowest in a bottom 10 that includes African-Caribbean, Indian, Liverpool and Cockney accents.
French English is rated so much higher than Indian English?
Pointing out these findings appears to be the simplest way of countering biases that, as Sharma tells companies, can lead to smart people leaving or not being promoted to suitable jobs.
When it comes to hiring new employees, the research suggests it helps to simply tell recruiters and HR teams that there is evidence interviewers may rate RP-speakers more favourably than others, and to encourage them to focus on job applicants’ knowledge and skills.
These solutions seem simplistic to me. What really matters is how much one knows, how capable one is. Sometimes an exotic, distinctive accent adds a certain mystique to an individual's persona that is actually to their advantage. Do I need to name names?
Selected readings
- "Stigmatization of dialects" (9/25/17)
- "Eye-dialect in the newspapers" (5/7/08)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
David Marjanović said,
June 16, 2024 @ 10:16 am
No. All the people who make it out of places like Eton College alive speak RP; as long as such people are vastly overrepresented in politics in general and among Conservative politicians in particular, so will RP be.
Combine classism and racism, and you'll find the answer.
I agree of course. Being aware of a bias doesn't automatically mean you get rid of it.
Philip Taylor said,
June 16, 2024 @ 10:44 am
"as long as [the people who make it out of places like Eton College alive] are vastly overrepresented in politics in general and among Conservative politicians in particular" — On what basis do you assert "vastly overrepresented", David ? On a purely numeric basis (less than 7% of British children attend public school) I would of course agree with you, but should parliament statistically represent the British public, or should it represent them on some other basis. Speaking purely for myself, I would want my member of Parliament to have had the best possible education, so that he or she could bring their well-honed intellect to the House and put it to use in debating (and deciding) the major issues that affect us all.
But to address the issue of accent bias directly. Yesterday I spent 40 minutes discussing the results of a recent echo-cardiogram with a consultant cardiologist. Like many (?most?) such professionals in the U.K., his accent was near-RP. And I believed everything that he told me. Now suppose that he had spoken with a marked "Sarf London" accent, or had spoken Estuary English, or had other low-prestige accent. Would I have placed the same credence on what he said ? Almost certainly not. It is, I believe, the most natural thing in the world to make instant value judgements on the basis of someone's accent, and while Devyani Sharma's workshops may well benefit the companies who consult her (because they may well end up hiring better candidates than they would have otherwise), I do not believe that they will make one iota of difference regarding day-to-day personal interactions such as that which I had with the cardiologist.
Chris Button said,
June 16, 2024 @ 11:08 am
I used to give part-time "pronunciation" classes to immigrants and international students at a community College in the United States. I was slightly taken aback when one of my students told me she wanted me to make her sound like she had been born in America! I pointed out that if she listened carefully she'd be able to tell that I wasn't raised in America either. My job was to get them to a point where no-one would ever have any trouble understanding their pronunciation in America. After that, they should just own and be proud of their accent–however it may sound.
I also went in heavy with the lingusitics which I don't think some were expecting. Most really appreciated it because it helped them understand and manipulate what they were doing articulatorily. The relatively small class sizes let me focus on each student's individual lingustic background and then show the entire class what each of them was doing differently. They certainly came out of the classes knowing a lot about phonetics and phonology!
Chris Button said,
June 16, 2024 @ 11:10 am
(I should probably add that she did not specify where in America either–presumably it didn't matter, or she hadn't thought about that)
Rodger C said,
June 16, 2024 @ 11:39 am
I trained myself out of my West Virginia accent, which no doubt increased my prospects as an English professor, but I didn't adopt an American media accent; I (quite unconsciously0 tended toward a certain degree of Midatlantic (in the Pond sense), due at least partly to my experiences with native Midwestern-speakers. Nowadays doing what I did is considered cultural treason, and quite rightly too. At any rate, I speak a definitely mixed register with my wife and my back-home friends, sometimes surprising people who hear me on the phone.
David L said,
June 16, 2024 @ 11:52 am
@Philip Taylor: Your overt bias is among the reasons I find the US a more hospitable place to live and work than the UK, where I grew up.
On top of which, your assumption that people who attend (UK) public schools receive the best possible education is questionable, to say the least. I did not find BoJo a striking example of a "well-honed intellect".
Philip Taylor said,
June 16, 2024 @ 12:12 pm
I'm sure that BoJo did receive the best possible education (as do all who attend Eton College, or Marlborough, or any of our other better public schools) but unfortunately it would seem that he lacked the innate intellect required in order to make the most of that education. And I would far sooner manifest an overt bias than seek to conceal a covert one.
Lazar said,
June 16, 2024 @ 12:25 pm
I've never been able to understand this stance – it seems to be telling someone that they should arbitrarily cap their goal at 90% acquisition, say, instead of 100%. You don't have an "authentic" accent in a language not your own any more than you have an authentic syntax or authentic vocabulary in it. Not to mention the is/ought conflict involved – ideally no one should discriminate against people for having non-native accents, but in reality they do, so the best pragmatic advice for a learner is almost certainly to aim for the most nativelike pronunciation they can.
Philip Taylor said,
June 16, 2024 @ 12:32 pm
I don't know (for obvious reasons) whether the following statement would also be true of America, but in England I would say that a foreign accent is far less stigmatised than a low-prestige one.
Benjamin Geer said,
June 16, 2024 @ 3:31 pm
In Language and Symbolic Power, Bourdieu argued that people who speak the most prestigious language variety (the “legitimate language”) gain an automatic aura of authority, regardless of whether they merit it, that such people are overwhelmingly from the dominant classes, and that this helps those classes sustain their dominance.
About the example of the doctor: consider that many patients would also have more confidence in a male doctor than in a female one, while in reality patients of female doctors tend to have better outcomes.
Chris Button said,
June 16, 2024 @ 3:47 pm
@ Lazar
The goal was 100% comprehensibility without any extra effort on the part of the listener. You could call that "native" proficiency (albeit only in terms or pronunciation).
Teaching someone to fake an accent is possible (a select few actors manage it, but they do have the luxury of retakes when they slip up), but it is a lot more challenging than you might imagine.
AntC said,
June 16, 2024 @ 6:01 pm
@PT I would want my member of Parliament to have had the best possible education, so that he or she could bring their well-honed intellect … [going on to equate 'best possible education' with RP]
I'm astonished. (I had to read that comment several times looking for hints of sarcasm. I still have a lingering doubt.) The 'best possible education' for governing a country is not obtained via Public School/Oxbridge. UK has had a series of such people in government. (I'm starting counting at Margaret Thatcher, and including Tony Blair. Liz Truss, needless to say, was at Oxford.) And look at the state of the place!
I left in 1995 precisely because of the upper-class twits and their air of arrogance engendered by the elite education system. But I couldn't have imagined anybody would think BoJo in any way competent: he's been a serial liar all through his Journalism career.
I associate the Oxbridge accent (which I'm not sure I'd count as RP) with mendacity and egotism. Give me a bluff Yorkshireman any day (Harold Wilson was at Oxford, but retained his Huddersfield accent) — or indeed a New Zealander. Honest. Trustworthy.
To PT's tale: Medics with over-posh accents I am also immediately suspicious of. Given how little medics can actually be sure of wrt the human body (there's another frequent commenter here who can talk to that), a little humility would go a long way to make them more credible. But along with the posh accents comes arrogance/know-it-all when they don't. I've had personal experience of gung-ho surgeons with posh accents who wield the knife first, then only explain the contra-indications and risks after they've already happened.
Michèle Sharik Pituley said,
June 16, 2024 @ 6:49 pm
@Rodger C: "I trained myself out of my West Virginia accent"
I trained myself out of my southwestern Ohio small town (+mom who grew up speaking Plaatdüütsch – specifically Emsländisch – & dad who grew up in Jersey City) accent at the age of 32 because I was teased for it when I moved to California. (I used to sound like: "that may-an has a tay-an vay-an".) I recently discovered to my chagrin that I still say "ol change" even though I say "olive oy-uhl".
Now I'm told that I sound like I'm from everywhere… and nowhere.
Michèle Sharik Pituley said,
June 16, 2024 @ 7:01 pm
@Philip Taylor: "I don't know (for obvious reasons) whether the following statement would also be true of America, but in England I would say that a foreign accent is far less stigmatised than a low-prestige one."
Here in America, I would say that's also true to a point. I thnk it depends on a lot of things, especially *which* foreign accent it is. For example, RP, French, or other "Standard" European (for whichever European language it is) is much less stigmatized than less Standard versions of those.
That said, many Americans may not know if a particular accent is "low- or high-prestige," so it may mostly depend on how "thick" the accent is — as well as the experience the listener has had with hearing/deciphering foreign accents in general.
I've often wondered *why* (for example) a Italian accent is more acceptable than (for example) a Vietnamese accent. How much of that is racism?
JPL said,
June 16, 2024 @ 8:04 pm
Sadly and regrettably, and following long-standing stereotypes, I've found that in the US, an African accent, whether West, East or South, generally is regarded more highly than an AAVE accent, and even viewed as a positive. I'd put that down to "classist" prejudices. (There's also probably some of the "exotic vs close to home" bias.)
Chips Mackinolty said,
June 16, 2024 @ 8:06 pm
Up until the 1960s, announcers and newsreaders on the Australian Broadcasting Commission almost invariably spoke RP.. [Pommy English].
Since then, that has changed, with an Australian accent being widely accepted. Not, mind you, what might be described as a "broad' accent a la Barry McKenzie! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_McKenzie]!
Jon said,
June 17, 2024 @ 1:49 am
I share AntC's astonishment that Philip Taylor apparently thinks that upper-class twits are the best people to run the UK. Apart from a good education in the Classics, the Eton/Oxford crowd acquire an arrogant assumption of their own rightness, and are insulated by money from the concerns of most of the population.
My feeling is that accent bias is like racial bias: intellectually it is ridiculous. But it is present to some degree, often hidden or unconscious, in the culture and in most of us, and awareness of it helps to counteract it.
But such attitudes have never been all-pervasive. I was surprised and pleased more than 30 years ago to meet a fairly senior UK Treasury official with an unabashed 'Sarf London' accent.
(Disclosure: my native accent is close to RP/BBC, my wife has a Lancashire accent.)
Julian said,
June 17, 2024 @ 4:14 am
@chips mackinolty
Australia's mid 20th century newsreader accent certainly sounds posh / Englishy to my modern Australian ears.
But I wonder whether it really sounds English to English ears? I have some doubts. Perhaps English readers can comment?
Below is a good example of the contrast of newsreader accent and normal people's accent – journalist interviews people on the street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBGt-oA_5Bg&pp=ygUfcXVlZW4gZWxpemFiZXRoIGluIHN5ZG5leSAgMTk2Mg%3D%3D
Julian said,
June 17, 2024 @ 4:21 am
Accent bias can work the other way.
67 yo Australian here.
Whenever I see on tv let's say a stately homes documentary with the lord of the manor talking like prince Charles, I have to keep repeating to myself, 'it doesn't necessarily mean he's an upper class twit – that's just the way some people talk '
AntC said,
June 17, 2024 @ 4:36 am
@Julian But I wonder whether it really sounds English to English ears?
English ears speaking here, but I've lived in NZ ~30 years, with frequent trips to Aus.
And it's complicated: lots of Aus/NZers go to Blighty for their O.E., so maybe get the corners knocked off their twang. Furthermore some of NZ's newsreaders were originally Brits.
That interviewer certainly has a noticeable not-quite-EngRP accent. I've watched older newsreels from NZ TV, and I can hear what people mean by "sounds posh/Englishy". But there are a few tell-tale signs, especially in the pronunciation of place-names.
So, no: doesn't sound quite English.
Peter Taylor said,
June 17, 2024 @ 5:02 am
@AntC, it's not obvious why you're lumping Cambridge in with Oxford. The last Cantabrigian PM was Stanley Baldwin.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "the Oxbridge accent". When I studied and then lived in Cambridge I didn't get the impression that people around me were trying to disguise their various regional accents.
AntC said,
June 17, 2024 @ 6:03 am
I'm also not sure what you mean by "the Oxbridge accent".
I'm thinking of my contemporaries from school in outer West London. (A State Grammar, not a residential/fee-paying 'Public School'.) Some went to Oxford, some went to Cambridge. I visited both from my concrete University. a) all their accents changed noticeably; b) the Ox vs Cam academic accent was indistinguishable; c) all their contemporary students from wherever in the country put on the same accent; d) the students' accent was nothing like the local townsfolk nor even the 'scouts' and other servants within the Halls. (It's also the accent of an academic I communicate with regularly in my field — who's at Cambridge/was also an undergrad there.)
Admittedly their accents did revert somewhat after they left the places. I conjecture those who were exposed to exactly that accent throughout their younger ('Public') schooling didn't so revert.
I would not call the accent RP in the sense of 'BBC English'. Neither is it quite the same as 'Sloane Ranger' — though there's quite a bit of overlap. I can't imagine RP includes the sort of trumpeting and braying I heard. (For example from a house fellow who'd just come back from an actual foxhunt, having overindulged in the stirrup-cup, as he readily admitted.)
Mark Metcalf said,
June 17, 2024 @ 7:16 am
I've also encountered accent bias (preference?) in putonghua.
The first example was from a couple of weeks ago at a symposium. The daughter of the benefactor of the symposium told a story about when her Beijing-native father, and ultimately a US Army flag officer in the 1990s, had the opportunity to meet with some representatives from the PRC and they marveled at his strong Beijing accent – going so far as to express their enjoyment in simply listening to it. Having studied Chinese under Daniel T. Y. Lee at USNA, I know what they meant – he was also a Taiwan TV Washington correspondent in the early 1970s and spoke with the Mandarin equivalent of proper BBC English.
The other example was from a Beijing bookstore in 2017. After receiving the obligatory "your Chinese is so good" compliment from a clerk, we chatted for a few minutes and I mentioned that my wife (a huaqiao from NC who grew up in Taipei) spoke with a noticeable Taiwanese accent. The clerk with a "Yeah. We always have a difficult time understanding those people from Taiwan!".
Philip Taylor said,
June 17, 2024 @ 7:35 am
On the basis of fairly limited experience, I believe that Taiwan putonghua, when compared to Beijing putonghua, has a significantly flattened tonal range. I would be interested to read informed comments on this hypothesis.
David Marjanović said,
June 17, 2024 @ 1:53 pm
Sure – but do the "public schools" really provide the best education, or has their reputation diverged from reality and is now sustaining itself in a logical circle?
(Of course this can't really be answered as long as we haven't worked out what "the best education" should look like. I just want to pose the question.)
:-) I believe it is one of the most British things in the world to do that. I'm not aware of anywhere outside the UK where there is such a strong correlation between accent and position in society (to the point that accent alone largely functions as sociolect).b
…China might actually be getting there with the CCTV accent, but it's not there yet.
Perhaps the most dramatic example may be [ʀ]. Before the French Revolution it was apparently a marker of the Parisian middle class. Now it (and the approximants & fricatives that have developed from it) covers almost all of French, German, Dutch, Danish, southern Swedish and ?southern Polish and is showing up in Russian suspiciously often – while [r] has become a marker of Bavarian and Flemish ethnic (tribal?) identity.
AntC said,
June 17, 2024 @ 4:51 pm
I believe it is one of the most British things in the world to do that. [make instant value judgements on the basis of someone's accent]
Hear, hear! It's not a thing even in NZ, which you'd'a thought would follow suit closely.
AntC said,
June 17, 2024 @ 8:18 pm
it's not obvious why you're lumping Cambridge in with Oxford. The last Cantabrigian PM was Stanley Baldwin.
From the same wiki page as (presumably) you found Baldwin:
Alastair Campbell, Kenneth Clarke, Matt Hancock, Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd, David Mellor, …
That's by no means a complete, list; and I stopped at 'M'. I do concede some of those might be described as not so incompetent as to wreck the British economy. OTOH others fully qualify as mendacious.
But mind-bogglingly, first alphabetically is Diane Abbott. Not at all known for a yahoo accent.
I guess Cambridge 'scores' higher for satirists (Cambridge Footlights) … and spies.
Julian said,
June 17, 2024 @ 8:40 pm
Further to my previous comment: watching a tv documentary the other day on the Parthenon marbles.
To represent the "keep them" side the presenter had dredged up an eminent English lawyer who spoke very posh.
To be fair to him I had to put a lot of effort into trying to screen out his posh, not very likeable manner and just listen to his arguments.
But it was interesting to think more about what it was exactly that made him sound posh and not very likeable.
It was not only the accent but also his unnaturally clear diction, complicated sentence structures, and lack of the normal disfluencies of casual conversation.
Sitting at a cafe table arguing like a lawyer in court.
It all works together to create the impression.
AntC said,
June 17, 2024 @ 9:11 pm
not so incompetent as to wreck the British economy
I should wash out my mouth. There's a serious omission from that wiki page: Kwasi Kwarteng — exactly who implemented Liz Truss's wrecking went to … Cambridge (Trinity College, and Eton before that). And here he is in full creaky-voiced condescending accent in his mendaciousness.
Philip Taylor said,
June 18, 2024 @ 4:40 am
Point taken — I will re-cast my earlier comment as " It is, I believe, the most natural thing in the world for a Briton to make instant value judgements on the basis of someone's accent". But despite Ant's observation that "It's not a thing even in NZ, which [you would have] thought would follow suit closely", it is, I believe, "a thing" in Australia. I make this observation based both on first-hand experience and on a web search which I have first conducted.
[First-hand experience] Before going to work for CSIRO (DITMELB) for six weeks in 1987, I had been led to believe that Australians did not, in general, disclose their class in their accents. But nothing could have been further from the truth. Travelling on the Melbourne tram in the morning, my immediate impression was that almost everyone was speaking what I will call "broad Australian" (think Dame Edna Everage). But when I entered the CSIRO/DITMELB office suite, the accents were totally different — noticeably toned down, almost "refined".
[Web search] While the majority of web sites offering elocution lessons are U.K. based, there is one clear counter-example — that of Cadenza Executive Communication, based in Melbourne and headed by Dr Sarah Lobegeiger de Rodriguez.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 18, 2024 @ 4:45 am
This discussion has made me quite sad.
I would have hoped that there's a bit more self-awareness among self-professed language geeks.
@ David Marjanović: [It is, I believe, the most natural thing in the world to make instant value judgements on the basis of someone's accent] :-) I believe it is one of the most British things in the world to do that This applies to any language. It may be mitigated by the range of variability, but because variability in phonetics must be present in spoken production (by definition), it is absolutely used in all language as an in-group/out-group marker because it's easily available.
Do you want to say that, for let's say Hamburg listeners, there is no judgement of someone speaking German in a Saxon/Swiss/Cologne/Thuringian accent? French in a Quebec accent for European listeners? Rioplatense in Madrid? Tromsø Norwegian for Oslo listeners?
Just last year, I was in an excellent and very level-headed lecture by Ocke-Schwen Bohn on the topic, and he gave the excellent example of a Danish furniture chain in Germany preferring their staff to have Danish accents. Would you claim that they did that in a situation where the public were incapable of detecting the accent and indifferent to it???
From ten seconds of Googling: "Navigating accent bias in German: children's social preferences for a second-language accent over a first-language regional accent" [link]
southern Polish [ʀ] is universally considered a speech defect in Polish. No accent has it as the default allophone.
The general finding in research looking into accent attitudes is that it's attitudes to groups of people projected onto (stereotypes of) accents. @AntC provides evidence in upper-class twits and their air of arrogance. I.e., "I hate the twits therefore I hate the accent therefore I hate people with the accent (even if they are not twits)".
@Chris Button I was slightly taken aback when one of my students told me she wanted me to make her sound like she had been born in America Welcome to the real world. I really can't see why this is surprising to anyone. The ideology of "keep your accent, it's fine" is there only because it's very difficult to change your accent, and in particular it's nearly impossible post-puberty for non-native learners. If everybody has that, and there's little status differentiation between the accents, then it's largely OK, as it is today for English in continental Europe. In a largely native-speaker context, e.g. the US, a foreign accent will always be a marker of out-group membership.
Chris Button said,
June 18, 2024 @ 5:45 am
@ Jarek Weckwerth
As i pointed out to my student and in my post above, that's my world. No need for any further welcome. I live in it already .
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 18, 2024 @ 6:14 am
I can't really parse your reply, so let me clarify my point. What I meant was: (1) I think that your student expressed the majority belief, irrespective of whether that's good or bad; (2) I think that that belief would in fact be not-good in an ideal world; (3) You admit that you were unaware of that belief, or that you find it unsavoury ("I was taken aback"). In other words, welcome 'you seem to be new to this', real world 'actual reality, which is uglier than an ideal world'.
If that is not how the phrase "Welcome to the real world" works, then apologies; I'm not a native speaker… (I don't add an emoticon because I don't want to be too confrontational; and apologies if you found the phrase confrontational in the first place.)
Chris Button said,
June 18, 2024 @ 6:44 am
No worries. I really had two points, both more clearly made in my response to Lazar above:
1. I was a pronunciation coach rather than an accent coach. The latter would be fun, but it's really for actors.
2. I was not born or raised in the US. However, like many people, I have a tendency to unintentionally adopt aspects of people's speech around me.
Chris Button said,
June 18, 2024 @ 6:49 am
And on occasion, it is also sometimes intentional too for ease of listener comprehension.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 18, 2024 @ 7:55 am
AntC said,
I have no idea who KK or LT are, nor anything about their politics, but _that's_ the accent! What is it called? It's the one that, to me (W.Pa.Am.Eng.), sounds like you're pentaphthonging _every_ _single_ _#$%&ing_ vowel (e.g. "home"/hom/ ==> /haeiouym/). Do polyphthongists similarly cringe in the face of monophthongists' speech?
Philip Taylor said,
June 18, 2024 @ 10:39 am
Benjamin — /haeiouym/ is, I would say, very traditional high-RP, as used by the landed gentry to differentiate themselves from hoi polloi. As to whether they would cringe when faced with a monophthongist, I cannot say (tho' I suspect not — a chap does not need to cringe when confronted by a member of the lower classes), but they would almost certainly make a mental note "definitely not one of us".
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 18, 2024 @ 12:27 pm
Philip,
I wonder if any of those linguistic "rules" come into play here. In other words, is it a general trend among languages that long, languid, luxurious vowels tend to indicate status (i.e., "I have the kind of leisure time to be able to draw out my words as long as I want.")?
Everybody beats up on the U.K. for accent snobbery, but I'd posit that it exists just as strongly Stateside, except that it's not systematized, and everybody plays by slightly varying rules. If you refer to a certain inner Pittsburgh suburb as /Mahlle'bənən/, I know you hung out with working-class kids in your youth while your accent was forming. If you say /Mount Leb'ənən/, then you're still from Western Pennsylvania, but you're trying not to sound "low". If you say /Mount Lebə'non/, you are not from here and people will snicker at you.
You need not have a "prestige" dialect to get elected in Pittsburgh, however. Former Mayor, Sophie Masloff had such a strong (Yiddish-tinged) yinzer accent that people thought she was putting it on. Same with former County Executive, Rich Fitzgerald, with his own Irish-flavored yinzerlect.
Andrew Usher said,
June 18, 2024 @ 8:59 pm
Chris Button:
I can't agree with the idea that no learner should ever aim for a native accent. Yes, it's not obligatory to sound native-like, but that;s quite a different thing from saying it is wrong. It ts not impossible to achieve an accent enough native-like that you won't be picked out in ordinary interaction, and should not be exceptionally difficult if one really tries. It's not a 'fake' accent to do so, any more than it's 'fake' that I have abandoned regional features in my speech deliberately.
In the US, this is probably more desirable if you're white, as no one expects an apparently white person to have a foreign accent.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Chris Button said,
June 18, 2024 @ 9:33 pm
@ Andrew Usher
Im not sure i quite follow you. Everyone needs a reference benchmark to aim for. That's what we all do when we learn a foreign language. There's nothing wrong with that at all, and there's certainly no fakery involved (unless you're an actor playing a role)
Chips Mackinolty said,
June 18, 2024 @ 9:46 pm
@everyone who has contributed to this post! I have so enjoyed the discussions about accents.
As a personal footnote, I lived on and off in Sicily (Palermo mostly), and when visiting northern Italian friends they would laugh–not so much at my ratshit Italian–but at my "southern" Italian accent!
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 18, 2024 @ 10:42 pm
Chips,
It’s because you leave off all your terminal vowels and scatter “u” everywhere! But you can remind your amici settentrionali that not even Manzoni wrote in Lombard. Honestly, I’d bet scarpat’ to scones that Italians are bigger accent snobs than Brits. How Dante ever got Florentine to become the prestige dialect I’ll never know.
Thought #2: Phonology is a peculiar thing. Our dear alma mater saw fit to let me study at the University of Paris for a semester, during which time I developed an accent that could be mistaken for Parisian if you didn’t spend more than a minute or so talking to me. But, whenever my non-francophone friends from the US would come to visit me, it felt “weird” to deploy Parisian slang (“vachement”, “mon pôte”, “meuf”, etc.), and it also felt “weird” to make “French sounds” that are absent from English phonology, even while speaking French to French people (e.g, the inhaled “ouais”, tacking on “euh” at the ends of words ending in “e” for emphasis, and even the French “u” sound), because those sounds sound “funny” to American ears. So, in the presence of my American friends, my spoken French was far more American-accented than it otherwise would have been. What would the psycholinguists say about that?
AntC said,
June 19, 2024 @ 1:01 am
What would the psycholinguists say about that?
I (having lived various places in Britain, so not acquiring any particularly strong regional accent) then worked quite a bit in Asia-Pacific for 'International' clients — variously American-dominated or Brit-dominated or German-dominated.
I evolved what I'd call a mid-Pacific accent: further away from American than is mid-Atlantic; closer to the expats who once ruled Hong Kong or Singapore; with a slight nod to the many Australians on the circuit. Somewhat clipped word-endings, because most of those I was dealing with day-to-day were Southern Min (Hokkien)/Cantonese native speakers.
I was very aware that when I needed to speak to my team back in Britain (Yorkshire), such a ruse would sound affected. Then was I mimicking/patronising my clients? I don't think so; I retained an unmistakably Brit accent; with variable overtones.
Andreas Johansson said,
June 19, 2024 @ 1:32 am
There are disadvantages to having too good an accent. You may, frex, be taken for an idiot rather than an outsider who understandably doesn't know how things work around here.
Sven said,
June 19, 2024 @ 1:53 am
In Germany there is the idea that a certain class of very established upper class people who usually would speak a distinguished standard german can (and do) codeswitch to a strong regional dialect if they want to appear more approachable. It is for example described in Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, but is assumed to still exist today. I believe this also applies to Italy.
I wonder if this is also a common expectation in England (or the UK) as well, or if this might be a difference in how the class systems work.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 19, 2024 @ 4:29 am
There are disadvantages to having too good an accent. You may, frex, be taken for an idiot rather than an outsider who understandably doesn't know how things work around here.
So very true.
Philip Taylor said,
June 19, 2024 @ 5:57 am
As I believe I have reported before, I was once "taken for an idiot" by a young boy in Biały Dunajec because it was patently obvious to him that, unlike everyone else with whom he had ever come into contact, I could speak barely a word of Polish — he even endeavoured to lead me by the hand upstairs, clearly believing that I lacked the ability to work out how to get upstairs by myself …
Philip Taylor said,
June 19, 2024 @ 6:31 am
Benjamin — « I wonder if any of those linguistic "rules" come into play here. In other words, is it a general trend among languages that long, languid, luxurious vowels tend to indicate status (i.e., "I have the kind of leisure time to be able to draw out my words as long as I want.") ? » — that is an interesting question, but it would take someone with infinitely more experience of world languages than I to answer. But you do remind me of one notable phenomenon — in CCTV4 films set in ancient China, a proclamation from the Emperor (or Empress, or other very high-ranking dignitary) would be proclaimed with extremely clear tones and with many, if not all, words artificially lengthened by a factor of two or even more. Do you think that this may be a related phenomenon ?
David Marjanović said,
June 19, 2024 @ 7:37 am
That's my point, though: it's not class-based. Regional accents mark you as coming from a region, and the prejudices thereunto pertaining will then apply to you; but there is no non-regional accent like RP is.
In both Polish and Russian it's much too widespread for that, and it's not limited to people who are anatomically incapable of articulating [r].
My little francophone cousins have reanalyzed that as a standalone sentence-final interjection, completely independent of any spelling (which they've only begun to learn).
That's known to occur. The Pirahã successfully kept their bilabial trill from Daniel Everett for years because it's widely considered the funniest thing about their language.
But if the Buddenbrooks ventured out of northern Germany, their northern Standard German accent would immediately get them pinpointed to northern Germany.
Take Olaf Scholz, a former mayor of Hamburg. He pronounces Gas as [g̊asː] in his speeches as chancellor instead of, for example, [g̊aːs]. ☞ Far north.
David Marjanović said,
June 19, 2024 @ 7:42 am
In German there technically is one: stage pronunciation. But nobody talks like that outside the most upscale theater stages (…except Tobias Moretti does in his movies because he's also an actor at Austria's most upscale theater). It is composed by half of far-northern features, by half of deliberately artificial features that are concessions to theater acoustics.
The accent that's hardest to delimit geographically is that of the cinema actor Sky du Mont. Even that accent is definitely from Germany. (…It turns out he grew up in Argentina.) I'm not aware of anybody else talking like that.
Chris Button said,
June 19, 2024 @ 10:12 am
RP as classicly defined is hardly spoken now and is indeed non-regional. The discussion here seems to be on modern RP that is colored by regional flavorings.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 19, 2024 @ 11:12 am
@ David Marjanović: That's my point, though: it's not class-based. Regional accents mark you as coming from a region, and the prejudices thereunto pertaining will then apply to you; but there is no non-regional accent like RP is.
Oh OK, then sorry! I thought you were saying that making value judgements on the basis of accent does not happen in other languages.
But then, isn't there a Trudgillian triangle (or perhaps trapezoid) kind of situation even if there isn't a non-regional accent? As in, less variability at the top of the social scale than at the bottom? (And perhaps different attitudes towards the bottom?)
Plus, as Chris Button points out, "modern RP" is Standard Southern English English, really. It's not non-regional.
Stephen said,
June 19, 2024 @ 4:20 pm
@Benjamin Geer
I saw a post from you the other day and, wanting to drop you a note, I went to the page linked from your name.
However the Contact section there is blank. Is there some way I can get in touch?
Stephen Osborn
Philip Taylor said,
June 19, 2024 @ 4:38 pm
Stephen, try his Orcid page — that which you seek is there.
Andrew Usher said,
June 19, 2024 @ 9:35 pm
Chris Button:
You did say explicitly that you told a student not to attempt to learn native-like pronunciation and, in your current words, "be proud of and own your accent", which I question even for natives; it's worthless for non-natives. To me, one can be proud of something only that one actually achieves with effort. Britain may no longer have a non-regional accent, but everyone can see that America does, and that should be the goal, though one can put more or less effort into it according to personal preference or circumstances.
Andreas Johansson writes:
> There are disadvantages to having too good an accent. You may, frex, be taken for an idiot rather than an outsider who understandably doesn't know how things work around here.
That is possible, but I wouldn't call it an accent problem. Rather the problem is that 'things' don't work the same way in the whole civilised world!
Chris Button said,
June 19, 2024 @ 10:02 pm
@ Andrew Usher
I think you should quote me explicitly rather than paraphrase. I never said that I told a student "not to attempt to learn native-like pronunciation." I just said I was surprised that she wanted to sound like she had been born and raised in the United States because I don't even sound that way myself (and candidly it would have taken a lot more time than we had together).
Julian said,
June 20, 2024 @ 3:49 am
The purpose of teaching someone an L2 is to help them communicate with L2 speakers, innit?
Too strong a "foreign" [L1 influenced] accent can impede communication.
So isn't it worthwhile to try to teach them a good L2 accent?
Exactly which L2 accent it should be, if there are options, is a separate question.
Andrew Usher said,
June 20, 2024 @ 7:50 am
Yeah, pretty much.
Chris Button:
Sorry if I seemed to misrepresent you. I never aim to, and would prefer to use exact quotes, but it gets rather cumbersome in a long thread here and I don't normally think it should matter too much. I found your apparent attitude toward accents strange (though you aren't alone in expressing such things, of course).
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 20, 2024 @ 8:11 am
Andrew Usher said,
That makes a lot of sense. U.S.-born Americans might as well continue in the accent of their birth, but someone learning English as L2 would do best to learn to speak "vaguely-midwestern newscaster English" (or whatever we call our non-regional accent) for maximum comprehension and versatility. Maybe the caveat would be that, if you're planning to settle in some particular place — say deep in the bayou of Louisiana — newscaster English isn't going to help you much there.
Chris Button said,
June 20, 2024 @ 9:21 am
@ Andrew Usher
No worries. I think you are talking about native speakers of American English losing more regional accents rather than non-native speakers losing their foreign accents.
@ Benjamin E. Orsatti
Yes, the model should be for maximum ease of comprehension by the biggest number of listeners.
David Marjanović said,
June 20, 2024 @ 11:09 am
In German, in any case, there is much less variability between Standard accents than between the dialects (Standard accents have to line up with the spelling without too many irregularities, dialects obviously don't); but speaking Standard vs. dialect correlates much better to the situation than to the social scale. Everybody is expected to be able to speak Standard German in one Standard accent.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 20, 2024 @ 4:20 pm
@ David Marjanović: Everybody is expected to be able to speak Standard German in one Standard accent.
I have to say I find this too perfect to be true. Everybody? You mean the local farm hands, or miners, or packhouse workers, or cleaners, etc., in let us say a village near Erfurt, are expected to speak Standard German without a local accent?
Stephen said,
June 20, 2024 @ 5:04 pm
@Philip Taylor
Thanks very much.
Andrew Usher said,
June 20, 2024 @ 10:16 pm
Jarek Weckwerth:
I'm pretty sure DM meant 'some accent', not 'the same accent', though it's ambiguous and should be made more clear to non-Germans.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 21, 2024 @ 2:18 pm
Say, here's something I've always wondered (now that there are Englishers among us): What is the name for the type of accent that Paul Scofield had? I think his reading of "The Waste Land" is leaps and bounds better than T.S. Eliot's own reading. It's clearly "English", but it doesn't do all of those vowely things. I'd guess Jeremy Irons would be in the same category — what's the name for it?
David Marjanović said,
June 21, 2024 @ 3:44 pm
Yes, in one of the Standard accents, all of which are regional (except as mentioned the stage pronunciation that is just about only used on upscale theatre stages). I'm having COVID and didn't notice the ambiguity.
In German, that's characteristic of certain Styrian dialects and not carried on into any Standard accent… so, no, like all such things it's not a general trend. :-)
Kemers said,
June 22, 2024 @ 2:03 am
@Benjamin E. Orsatti: "What is the name for the type of accent that Paul Scofield had? It's clearly "English", but it doesn't do all of those vowely things. I'd guess Jeremy Irons would be in the same category — what's the name for it?"
I would just call it RP (received pronunciation). RP comes in more than one variety. It doesn't have to sound stereotypically upper class.
I like to gauge actors in interviews, where I assume I'm hearing their (current) everyday speaking voice. Prior to 1960, those from grittier backgrounds would learn RP as a (necessary at the time) route to professional advancement – specifically, any chance at landing serious dramatic roles. They would be so successful at burying their childhood accents, it's unlikely they could ever convincingly revert to them. As examples, I'd give Peter O'Toole (Leeds), Leonard Rossiter (Liverpool), Richard Burton and Stanley Baker (Glamorgan), and Ian Richardson (Edinburgh).
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 22, 2024 @ 9:52 am
@Andrew Usher, David Marjanović: It's 100% clear that there will be multiple "standard" accents that are local; there's no quarrel there. My point is that, like in every other language, there will be a difference in accent between (a) an upper-middle class person pronouncing a standard text (I dunno, let's say an official statement in court, an address etc. etc., where there's no "dialect" lexis and syntax) and (b) a lower-working class person performing the same text. In other words, it will be possible to assess the person's social class from the accent only.
Chips Mackinolty said,
June 22, 2024 @ 11:06 pm
Sorry me again: beware of a "posh British accent"! It can be a dangerous thing!!
"The man with the "posh British accent" on the other end introduced himself as "from ING" and asked if she was interested in good rates on fixed-term deposits."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-23/canberra-woman-loses-million-dollars-to-scam-banks-regulation/104010742