“I speak with an accent, I don’t think with one.”

This quote from one of my old managers has stuck with me. It came up when we were discussing racism and how people respond to difference. It was one of those moments that made me realise my own privilege and all the assumptions we make about accents. I’ve thought about it a lot of times since, and wanted to reflect in this entry on its application for both foreign and regional accents.

A majority of those reading this will not actually have heard me speak, but there seems to be some disagreement about classifying mine. My local friends and colleagues have tended to say I sound ‘posh’ whilst at the other end of the spectrum, my Oxford college friends thought I was one of the most ‘common’ sounding with a ‘Brummie’ accent. Those two class-based descriptions are the problem.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time online and made friends all over the world. It was remarkably freeing because no one knew anyone’s age, gender, race or real name. (I acknowledge this is also why it’s a parent’s worst nightmare.) We corresponded in English and, in a written format of blogs and message boards, you couldn’t tell if someone was working in a second language. Regional accents would theoretically have been easier to pick out when colloquialisms were used, but I don’t remember noticing them.

We had one occasion when we talked about what accents we assumed each other had and an American friend admitted they read all my comments in the accent of Shere Khan from the Jungle Book. For those uninitiated, Shere Khan is voiced by George Sanders and wikipedia states, “His upper-class English accent and bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters.” So basically uber posh.

I made out that I was horrified at the time but I was secretly pretty chuffed. That sort of accent is one that speaks ‘properly’.

(For the avoidance of doubt: In reality, I definitely don’t sound like that.)

These days, in my post-accent revelation world, I appreciate that it’s just another sign of my privilege. It’s something I need to be aware doesn’t influence my perception of others. My teenage reaction shows the expectations of accents that we’re socialised into – what’s good and what’s bad.

My ex-manager who made the statement that I quoted at the start of this entry – ‘I speak with an accent, I don’t think with one‘ – was European and spoke English with a European accent. They were speaking from experience where they’d had people assume things about their intelligence, and treat them accordingly, simply because they sometimes pronounced words differently.

I want to pause on that for a moment. I am pretty terrible at languages and I couldn’t hope to explain my current job to someone in anything other than English right now. I’d still instinctively be offended if someone assumed I was less capable of doing it than a native speaking peer if my language skill was sufficient to communicate.

I wonder how often, subconsciously, those judgements are being made. I work with many people who speak English as a second, third or even sixth language. Sometimes I can’t tell – they are so awe-inspiringly good at English. I think many native English speakers fail to appreciate how hard someone has had to work to achieve that.

Sometimes English as a second language is more obvious, and I try and remember that wisdom from my old manager in those moments. If someone has gone to the effort of learning a second language in order to communicate, it feels like the bare minimum courtesy to spend the time it takes to listen, to speak at an accessible pace, and to be compassionate in decoding mispronunciations.

Given the number of times I, an avid reader, stand corrected on my English pronunciation for words I’m using aloud the first time (see ‘Lichen’), it’d be pure hypocrisy to do otherwise.

Accent doesn’t just affect perception of people speaking English as a second language though. I think accent bias is probably even more insidious in how regional accents colour perception. Unconscious bias around accents poses a significant barrier in the social mobility agenda.

Despite my University friends feeling I sounded ‘Brummie’, I grew up in the Black Country. I have very little trace of that accent, potentially because neither of my parents grew up locally so it didn’t exist at home and potentially as it was a slightly more affluent area where it wasn’t spoken as strongly. I think it was also because my parents were the sort of parents who recognised that society places value on how you speak. My Mum had done a language degree that saw her spend a year living abroad and my Dad was bilingual. I remember my Dad correcting my sister and I, “It’s ‘water’ with a ‘t’, not ‘wa’er’ – you need to talk properly.”

Ultimately, subconsciously or not, my friendship circle was largely made up of children who didn’t have strong Black Country accents and I ended up struggling to hear clearly when people spoke with a really strong accent. It became a problem when I stopped trying to listen because I was too embarrassed about getting teased for misunderstanding to try to make new friends. In protecting my ego, I was also denying myself potentially fantastic friends and a diversity of thought and perspective. Fortunately, my first job after University put me in the heart of the Black Country, surrounded by fantastic people with all variations of the accent. Now a strong accent makes very little difference – though there are variations all across the area – and I count myself fortunate in the friends I made and what they taught me.

Sandwell, where I worked primarily, was the 14th most deprived borough of around 150 local authorities at the time (as of 2019, it’s now 12th out of 317 whilst Birmingham is 7th – more here). People link that deprivation and the accent and create a self-fulfilling prophecy about individuals as soon as they open their mouths. It won’t necessarily conjure a bad image – warm-heart, large personality, hard-working – but the social mobility agenda is battling the challenge that the conjured image probably isn’t accountant, doctor, lawyer, scientist, etc. And whilst there’s a separate topic of debate about the value of different professions – particularly in light of Covid-19 – it is a problem when people can’t envisage pursuing certain careers with certain accents.

We still live in a world where people who want to move into ‘successful professions’ get elocution lessons. Yet, just like my manager, these individuals are not thinking with an accent. If we’re serious about achieving more equality in society, making people feel like they need to distance themselves from their roots is not the answer. It shouldn’t be necessary, and it’s on all of us to be self-aware enough to stop it being necessary.

If you’re interested in some more reading on either of these topics, I have two.

  1. I am currently part way through the fantastic ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ novel by Bernardine Evaristo. Content warnings for domestic abuse, violence and sexual assault, but I coincidentally reached Carole’s narrative after writing the first draft of this blog entry and it touches on the role of accent amongst a lot else.
  2. Accent Bias Britain is a research project that’s examined current attitudes to accent in Britain and has produced some training materials to help reduce bias in recruitment.

Thank you for reading!