Evelyn Heis
I’ve lost count of the number of people that have stopped me mid-sentence to comment on my English language ability. ‘Wow! Your English is really good!’ ‘Where are you from? … No, where are you really from?’ are comments I get again — and again.
Accent prejudice is not an isolated incident, it’s an exclusionary reaction to people that do not fit into a narrow mould.
“An accent chameleon”
People are curious and intrigued by my mix of accents. It’s true that I’m an accent chameleon.
Having spent my childhood in Wales, I have a bit of a Welsh twang, dotted with an English accent here and there from studying in Bristol for the last three years. After spending a few years living in Gibraltar, I also absorbed a Gibraltarian pronunciation and their lyrical tone. More often than not, I speak in a combination of all three Englishes, and no one can ever place where I’m from.
Moving around a lot meant that I absorbed the accents of everyone around me and, as a working-class, first-generation university student, my accent was a great source of anxiety during my studies.
“My accent was a dead giveaway that I was a foreigner, that I was different, despite living in the UK since I was eight”
In my first year of university, another student told me that my quality of English was ‘lowbrow’ because I was a non-native English speaker.
My accent was a dead giveaway that I was a foreigner, that I was different, despite living in the UK since I was eight and studying English Literature at a red-brick university.
I don’t think I really considered having an accent until it was all people spoke about when I came to university. I didn’t sound like everybody else, so I was immediately interrogated, my intelligence was constantly questioned — I was even called ‘exotic’ at one point.
“There’s a certain cultural capital and vernacular that lends itself to talking in an ‘academic voice’ — whatever that means”
From forgetting the words in English to slight mispronunciations, my accent became a great source of entertainment for my then-so-called friends. I was the butt of many jokes, as they repeated over and over the words that I didn’t say ‘correctly’.
When I think about the early days of university, I think about the shame I began to feel for speaking differently — something that is ultimately out of my control.
I had been made to feel embarrassed about my background, my family’s heritage, my ability to speak two languages and a prominent accent that reflects the cultures that have been woven into the fabric of my life — the things that inherently make me who I am.
Accent Prejudice at University
I know now that I am not alone in this experience. I have friends from the North that have experienced similar accent discrimination at university.
Their strong northern accents made people assume they were less educated and intelligent, even though we attended the same Russell Group university. This prejudice even transcribed onto their essays, where lecturers told them that they needed to adopt a more ‘academic’ voice.
In other words, they needed to sound more southern.
Jake, a first-generation final-year student at a Russell Group university who comes from Warrington, was told that he was very ‘well spoken’ when he first came to study in the South West of England.
He doesn’t believe his northern accent is “even that strong”. He went on to add that: “There’s a certain cultural capital and vernacular that lends itself to talking in an ‘academic voice’ — whatever that means.”
I was made to feel stupid from the well off majority at Bristol university. I made an error not realising the ‘badminton’ they were discussing involved horses and not rackets – I parodied their assumptions of my inner city world and my poor parentage. Fools.
— clare sidaway (@claresidaway) October 24, 2020
A third-year student at the University of Cambridge described how they were mocked in their first year for having an accent distinct from the Received Pronunciation accent of their peers.
They said: “Everyone would mimic my pronunciation and the way I would emphasise specific words. They would go around and laugh at my accent. I felt really embarrassed, and I tried to put on my best affluent ‘English’ accent after that.”
Accent discrimination is a product of classism and racism. It’s the product of a system that demands we speak, think, and write in a particular way while completely disregarding the various class, financial, and cultural barriers many people face.
In attempts to standardise one accent, deeming it as ‘right’ and ‘proper’, the system erases the shared histories between communities and the feelings of regional belonging that stem from having an accent.
Accents are an indicator of culture, and those who sound different are immediately ‘othered’.
With this in mind, it’s unsurprising to find that accent discrimination actively disadvantages minorities, hindering their ability to both transcend class barriers and overcome the stereotype that they are less intelligent because of their accent(s).
The Impact of Accent Prejudice
Dr Robert McKenzie has been researching accent prejudice for the last five years. Leading the Northumbria University Project, McKenzie urges that ‘these things do have real-world implications.’
For instance, McKenzie’s research has shown that children with stigmatised accents are less likely to get high marks at school and, in some cases, those with accents are more likely to be found guilty in court. Additionally, people with accents are less likely to be offered a job after an interview and given access to social housing.
“Having an awareness of the prejudiced perception of accents can only aid the way we continue to talk about these things in the future”
I believe that a majority of the time, these accent prejudices are subconscious. People have internalised these harmful stereotypes that are, no doubt, perpetuated by the mainstream media.
Modern Family’s (2009-2020) depiction of Gloria Delgado-Pritchett as a hot-headed Latina with an over-the-top accent was enough to take Latinx representation back a few years.
modern family was very xenophobic towards gloria, she was yet another "spicy latina". https://t.co/H1aurS2DhW
— callie SOYEON DAY taylor anti (@pIxmerias) November 30, 2021
But times are changing, and I believe having an awareness of accent discrimination can only aid the way we continue to talk about these things in the future.
No, having an accent does not make us any less qualified or intelligent than you, but pointing out that we sound different, is certainly a low blow.
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Featured image courtesy of Aedrian on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
Evelyn, this is such a great article. Very important topic, informative, and so nice to read. Congrats!