UK map showing the diversity of the English language
Adapted from an article by Lynsey
Hanley
theguardian, Monday 23 May
2016
The news that trainee
teachers are being encouraged to adopt a more middle-class accent and lose
their regional accents in order to be better “role models” for schoolchildren
is part of a worrying trend…
Call it the “Downton
effect”, or the return of old-fashioned snobbery, but there is, increasingly,
one acceptable way to be in society: middle class and from the south-east of
England.
As if further proof were
needed that the dominance of middle-class values and identity is becoming more
powerful, the linguistics researcher Alexander Baratta has reported that
trainee teachers from the north and Midlands are being asked by their
supervisors to lose their regional accents in order to be better “role models”
for schoolchildren.
What he terms “linguistic
prejudice” is essentially another form of class prejudice: northern accents, in
particular, are perceived to be exclusively working class, with scouse accents
firmly at the bottom of the value scale (a couple of months back, casting
agents for a new Morrisons advert put out a call for people with northern
accents to appear in the campaign, but with the firm instruction: “Nobody from
Liverpool, please.”)
Teacher trainees from
Leicester, Nottingham and Eccles interviewed by Baratta were told to “speak
properly” – in other words, without a regional accent – and that their
pronunciation was “too common”.
It provides further evidence
that teachers are being inducted into an education system designed to produce,
essentially, identical types of people. People with identical accents,
communication styles and methods of personal presentation are well primed to
work in the private sector, to earn above the median, and to compete for work
on the basis of not being different, but of simply being better at doing
exactly the same thing.
Becoming socially mobile is
simply a matter of someone from a non-professional background getting into the
professions. Take a rough diamond, polish it and send it back out into the
world more economically productive than before. Such simplistic logic denies
the experience of social mobility, which for many people – as revealed by the
subjects of Baratta’s study – involves being asked to change fundamental
aspects of who they are in exchange for achieving their ambition.
Schoolchildren interviewed
by the education researcher Diane Reay noted how such forms of snobbery are
passed down, from teacher trainer to teacher, from teacher to pupil. “Some
teachers think a pupil is stupid because he hasn’t got a posh accent,” said one
child. “I think telling you a different way of speaking is sort of good, but I
think the way they do it isn’t good because they correct you and make you look
stupid.”
Pupils realise the
importance of clear communication, and are aware that being given the chance to
acquire some of the skills of the dominant class may go on to serve them better
than a well-meaning teacher who pretends such things don’t matter. What pupils
resent is the implication that to sound working class is automatically to sound
stupid.
As aspects of culture become
more centralised and focused on London, it stands to reason that the “dominant
person” – the person who is valued most, who is viewed as the most civilised –
happens to be middle class and to speak in a standardised south-eastern accent.
It’s especially the northern museums that are closing, the northern councils
that have to prioritise adult care over libraries and parks because they can’t
afford both. The BBC’s 5 Live and CBeebies channels may have moved to Salford,
but you’d never guess it from the accents of its presenters.
The sociolinguist Peter
Trudgill noted as long ago as the 1970s that language use had begun to change,
and to some extent to level out, in smaller towns due to the undue influence of
larger, more culturally dominant cities. But this is clearly not the sort of
natural linguistic levelling that is brought about by people moving around more
often. The urge to devalue regional accents is part of a deliberate process.
We’re all being taught that the only acceptable role model – intelligent,
authoritative, responsible – is now a middle-class one.
