The wrong accent…
My other half tells me I have a cockney accent (East London twang for those of you not UK based) which used to irritate my snobby ego. Why? Because I infer what I know of someone partially from how they speak and I felt an East London accent was not doing me any favours.
Accents are a strange aspect of the human set up. It is essentially the way we pronounce and hence how we sound. But an accent is not to be confused with dialect which is a broader term for language differences encompassing words and grammar. This distinction does not matter so much for my meandering; suffice to say we all have an accent whether we believe it or not and it can change through time and exposure to others.
Although I flippantly mention my reaction to an accent or voice, I am of course not alone in these projections which means we shouldn’t be complacent in the implications. We all have prejudices and make conjectures when we hear an accent. Where is this person from? Are they intelligent? Accomplished? Successful? Trustworthy? Does the accent chime with the rest of what I’m perceiving and hence co-oberate and re-enforce my perception of the individual or jarringly is there a disconnect between the two? Accents and hence voices influence us in ways we are possibly surprised or too bashful to mention. Strong and incoherent accents tend to have the most negative feedback from listeners — more likely to have poorer job prospects and more likely to be found guilty in court.
Gender influences how we speak. A wider range of people prefer a woman’s accent to a man’s in automated sound systems. Although one exception was In 1990’s Germany, when BMW revamped a car navigation system after male drivers complained about having to take directions from a woman. During World war II, ‘Bitching Betty’ provided warnings to fighter pilots as men were more likely to pay attention to a different voice rather than a man’s, particularly in a stressful situation. The earlier Siri on the Apple devices was a woman who dropped her voice an octave to engender trust, competency and general pleasantness. The situation with which voices and accent to apply has always been complex and more so as devices with voices proliferate. It is invoking worries that using a woman’s voice in particular use cases can re-enforce gendered biases. For example a woman’s role is as a secretary, or competent assistant.
Why do accents exist? In my digging I’ve found we don’t know for sure. An accent is shaped on an areas history — whether it has been isolated, invaded, evolved through migration; culture; class and gender to name a few macro factors. Interplay our sub-conscious — the influence of the environment; who we want to portray; affiliation or distancing from a group and our diction is determined primarily by social rather than genetic factors. Speaking is a bio-mechanical process physically emerging from the control of the jaw, mouth, tongue, lips and vocal cords. It is learnt when we are young from those around us and this imprinted set of movements is difficult to modify (though can be modestly). Our accents are acquired at the same time but If we move location, if we so choose — consciously or not, our accents can become malleable and altered by the influence of the locale — possibly because we are able to mimic and want to fit in.
As an aside, clearly our brain is wondrous and somehow magically oversees our ability to communicate. But it can go awry. A rare disorder exists called Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). It is when a stroke or traumatic brain injury causes someone to speak with an accent of another region or country, even if they’ve never set foot there. So although I suggested accent is mostly based on social ingredients, there are other factors at play on our brain we are yet to understand.
If perception on a social level wasn’t contentious enough, accents are also seen as a component of the social mobility debate even though recent research suggests once we are aware of a bias its impact can reduce. In the UK, RP, Received Pronunciation, or BBC English is the accent long deemed the most prestigious and is associated with success and wealth. Think Royalty or the BBC. However although less than 10% of the UK population speak it. RP is rampant in certain professions — British newsreaders, Ministers, executives, lawyers and other members of the professional classes. Its targeted prevalence has given rise to wrangling about whether its teaching can improve social mobility or if we should be encouraging a multi accented country across all echelons of society and jobs or a further option is to foster the blending of accents because we will never eradicate that immediate prejudice we all keep within?
So of course, i’ve learnt something from this meander. I must be more aware of others, not project my impulse thoughts and absolutely not mimic their accents as it is dis-respectful….there again I do a great Austin Powers, Darth Vader, Trump, Golem, Robert DeNiro….
