Accent and Dialect article

Audience - regular guardian readers who are interested in the general language topic, surrounding accents, dialects and other issues.

Are we afraid of our own accent?

In light of the recent interview between Russell Brand and Ed Miliband where the latter seemed to be refining his accent to possibly 'connect' with his potential voters, is it true that we are afraid of our own accent, and need to regularly chop and change it to be liked and gain popularity?

Conformity is a regular occurrence in the social sphere - people change their beliefs and behaviours to be 'in' with the crowd and be liked, to gain popularity, to fit in. However, this is very similar to what is starting to occur with our accents; people are using 'covert prestige', a similar concept of changing their accents and dialects to fit in and avoid being judged (perhaps), but should people need to be converging their accents to suit the people they are with - can't we be happy and unafraid of being judged of our own voice?

This seems to be the case with Ed Miliband in his interview with Russell Brand, who slightly altered his original accent of Received Pronunciation using a slightly informal tone - 'yes' became 'yeah', glottal stops were used, and features were used such as elision shown through 'going to' becoming 'gonna' to potentially impress voters and converge with the people who will be voting in the general election. This just shows that even famous politicians are at threat of being pressured to change their accent to 'fit in', but why is this happening? According to language theorist Howard Giles' accommodation theory, Ed Miliband may have changed his accent to 'accommodate' the person he was talking to, in this case the strong Cockney Russell Brand, where he used a style of 'downward convergence'- a tool where general RP users tone down their accent when speaking to a person of lower class. Another example of this is the Queen who has been analysed to have toned down her strong RP to converge with the people, showing that even the most prestigious of people have, over time become uncomfortable in their own voice and have resorted to slight changes in their accent!

The opposite of downward convergence also exists, stated by Giles' accommodation theory, known as 'upward convergence', which is a more common occurrence where working class people eliminate strong regional features of accent and dialect when speaking to people of a higher class or users of RP; one example of this is covert prestige, where people use RP or standard English dialect to fit in with the crowd and to be accepted. However, why should this be the case - is it people feeling generally concerned about their accents, or has it come from persistent judging from prescriptivists who are overly obsessed with correct and 'acceptable' language use? A study done by William Labov named '4th floor study' shown that middle class workers in a prestigious retail store in New York used overt prestige when asked a question in which the sound of a 'rhotic R' would be used to prononce the word 4th, which is classed as an upper class style of language to use in the area. After being asked twice, the middle class workers, compared to upper class staff, had a much higher upward shift of the pronunciation of the rhotic R, maybe in response to not using it enough the first time, therefore being afraid of not sounding prestigious enough, but why is this? Can't we be comfortable with our own voice, a sign and reminder of our upbringing and where we come from?

Many language theorists suggest that, with people constantly moving up and down the country due to work and university, accents are becoming weaker due to 'dialect levelling', where people pick up regular occurrences of the accent where they are living and consequently drop parts of their own accent, but is this because of the reason generally thought of, or is it because people are not comfortable with their own accent and therefore want to feel respected and fit in by using features of the dialect where they are living - using covert prestige? Are students who go to university trying to gain a discourse community with fellow students, to share a lexical understanding, or are they changing because of being afraid of judgement, uncomfortable with their own dialect and voice? Whatever the reason, it is clear to see that prescriptive attitudes towards accents and dialects have caused people to change them to be respected and to fit into the social sphere.