article on attitudes to accents

You Are What You Speak
Over the years people have always had the tendency to prejudge others based on the way they speak and their accents. Are we ruled by our accents or are they simply just the way in which we speak?
Throughout the years our attitudes towards accents have changed. We are now more accepting than ever of diverse accents and accents that sound different to our own. People now even appear to enjoy the variety of accents that are heard around the globe as research shows that '78% enjoy hearing a variety of accents'. However, even though we enjoy the sound of all of the different accents, we still are very prejudice towards certain accents and make judgement on the character of a person based purely on the way in which they speak due to the area associated with the accent.

The area in which we are from has a huge impact on our attitudes towards accents. This quote comes from the book Bad Language by Anderson and Trudgill, ''American listeners, who do not recognise a Birmingham accent when they hear one, who know nothing about Birmingham and who probably don't even know where it is, do not find the Birmingham accent unpleasant at all. And everything they know about London leads them to find London accents highly attractive.". This quote tells us that we do not judge the accent specifically, but the area associated with the accent. If we have never heard of a area or their accent, then we tend to make no judgement on them based on their accent because we don't have the background knowledge to do so, however, when we already have opinions on areas, we associated the accent with the area and then with your opinion on it.

Age is seen to be an factor that seems to influence our attitudes to accents. Younger people and teenagers are said to be more accepting of different cultural accents within their home town. This may be down to the diversity in the UK and the different cultural experiences that young people are able to experience these days such as seeing different parts of the world and getting to know people first hand with accents different to their own and the typical accent of the town. The older generations seem to be more accepting of received pronounciation accents. This may be due to the way in which the older generation were raised and the opinions that they were taught about diverse cultures. Also, they grew up listening to the "cut-glass" English accents that featured on public information films of the past.