How does accent bias affect university students and what steps can organisations take to mitigate accent bias?
Our accent is part of who we are and part of our identity: How does accent bias affect university students and what steps can organisations take to mitigate accent bias?
Education and accent bias are linked. Have you ever felt like you will be, or are perceived as less intelligent purely because of your accent? That is because there is an entrenched, bi-directional relationship between intelligence and accent that is prevalent in our society. Somebody’s accent indicates where they are from, alludes to their educational background, and is suggestive of their social class, completely denoting their place in society. As such, how people speak is highly related to, and a strong informant of how people are perceived. People are judged because of their accents.
The link between ‘othered Accents’ and British societal structures
Linguistically-speaking, everybody has an accent. But it is Southern accents that are said to be the most aspirational, particularly those deriving from Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire regions. Accents that are considered aspirational are those conforming to Received Pronunciation (RP), which is used interchangeably with the terms ‘Queen’s English’, ‘BBC English’, or ‘Typical English’. These terms are not accents or dialects themselves, but refer to collections or groupings of aspirational accents. Other accents, especially those with Northern, Welsh and Midlands accents are those that comparatively suffer ‘accentism’, or simply put, accent discrimination. Accent and dialect have been core components of British societal structures for centuries, yet are one of the biggest perpetuators of inequalities. According to experts, because we learn our vowel and consonant sounds in childhood, as adults, we can only add to our repertoire of speech sounds, we cannot remove speech sounds. The implications of this are that our accent is part of who we are and part of our identity. Our accent is part of what makes us our unique self.
“My accent has been diluted since moving to England and being around majority southerners. It’s taken me a lot of unlearning and re-learning to appreciate my accent is linked to my background, a rich background full of lived experiences that has shaped who I am today. I no longer shy away from my accent and I love it when it’s brought out when I’m with friends I grew up with and family.” - First-generation Graduate.
Navigating accent discrimination in the graduate workplace
So why is it that 46% of UK workers have had ‘jibes’ made at them for their accent at some point in their career? Why is it that in a report that drew on a survey of 301 members of the Creative Access community, and a national survey of 2,000 British adults based on age, gender, region, ethnicity, sexual orientation and socio-economic status, that 89% of people said they believed they had been judged because of the way they speak? Why did 87% say that accent is a barrier to employment?
There was also a shock headline in June 2017, when a facilities management company called DCS Multiserve based in Newcastle conducted research yielding results that 8 in 10 employers admitted to discriminating on the basis of regional accents. Similarly, The Sutton Trust found that conservativism is a focus in the teaching profession, where trainee teachers are sometimes instructed to speak in a more ‘standardised’ way to match their RP peers. This means losing their regional accents or at least making them less apparent when speaking. The danger here is that individuals could feel compelled or pressurised to engage in codeswitching, traditionally referring to bilinguals switching between their languages, but the term has recently been coined as switching between accents or dialect. In the realm of accents or dialect, codeswitching is done for the benefit of others by people changing the way they speak, and can occur in response to marginalisation. It places strain on those doing it, and is cognitively exhausting. If individuals feel pushed into codeswitching because they are being ostracised, they are likely to be disengaged and burnt-out. This consequently shows that accent bias could be linked to workplace performance due to these outlined factors.
“Having been mocked for my accent from my first week of university over four years ago, I made a conscious choice to minimise my accent as much as I could, to the point that now I struggle to talk in my accent unless I am speaking with my parents. Looking back, I don’t think the jokes were ever intended to hurt me, but they left a lasting impression on me. Upon graduating and joining the workplace I am frequently told “You don’t sound like you are from the West-Midlands" as though it is a compliment, but it really just serves as a reminder that I went out of my way to change myself to fit in, and I feel I have lost a part of who I was.”
- First Generation Graduate
Zooming into HE – accents at university
Now looking at this in a university context, there are numerous statistics that prove accent bias affects students. University is a time where social interactions become more diversified, and it could be the first time a student has interacted with people who have different accents to themselves. When the Sutton Trust investigated accent bias in conjunction with social mobility, they found that in 2022, 35% of university students felt conscious about their accent, 33% were concerned that their accent would affect their ability to succeed post-university, and 30% said they had been mocked or criticised for their accent whilst at university.
“I was always mocked for my Welsh accent, my peers weren't trying to be offensive, but I was often subject to my sentences being repeated and laughed at, because it was different to what they had been brought up around. I’ve matured over the years and looking back, I would never feel comfortable imitating someone's accent and then proceed to laugh – I wonder if it is to do with being in the majority, a sense of privilege and ability to call out something different.”
- First-generation Graduate.
As is the case in workforces, there is a North-South disparity within this. Only 10% of university applicants from the South are conscious of their accent, 56% of students with a Northern accent report being mocked or criticised, and 51% of students with a Midlands accent report being mocked or criticised. The statistics go on. Individual testimonials additionally revealed under-representation as university students noticed that those in fields they aspired to work in post-graduation did not sound like them, hence creating feelings of inadequacy fuelled by accent.
Legislation
In spite of how common accent bias is, claims of direct discrimination on the basis of accent typically fail because there are not strong enough grounds, and no legislation protects individuals since accent is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Nor is social class. In places such as France however, accent discrimination is illegal.
Dismantling discrimination
So, how can accent bias be mitigated? According to an article on meritocracy (meaning a class of influential and education people, or a society governed by those chosen for merit), an extension of the popular acronym DEI to DEIB reflects the importance of belonging concurrent to diversity, equality, and inclusion. Accent bias ought to reflect part of the DEI(B) ethos of companies. Eradicating accent bias is not just the responsibility of one person, one institution, or one organisation. It is the collective responsibility of multiple bodies.
It is the hierarchy that needs to be lost, not people’s accents.
Workplaces and universities alike should be striving for cultures and environments where everybody feels visible and empowered.
Investing in training produced by Accent Bias Britain may help make these positive changes. Accent Bias Britain examines attitudes to different accents, and explores if accents play a part in assessing candidate suitability for jobs. Supporters of Accent Bias Britain include QMUL, the University of York, and the Economic and Social Research Council, to name but a few. The rationale is that if organisations pledge not to discriminate on the basis of accent, then they need to actually understand what accent bias is, its origins and history, and how they can proactively address their unconscious bias. With the expertise of three advisory board organisations – social mobility commission, CIPD and Aspiring Solicitors – Accent Bias Britain devised and tested five control strategies. Raising awareness is the most effective proven strategy at reducing bias.
Accent bias is not something abstract. It is very real and needs to be taken seriously. The UK has one of the highest levels of accent diversity in the world. Let people, organisations and society work together to avoid social mobility becoming stagnant.
Advice for those who have experienced accent bias
Remember that being authentic in your accent might be a work in progress!
“Since minimising my accent, people from home often assume I am ashamed of where I am from and can sometimes make me feel bad about myself for minimising my accent (it’s a two sided coin and the implications of identity shifting.”
If you have minimised your accent because of how other people have treated you in the past or fear of how you may be treated in the future, remember that is ok, it's not your fault and it is not a reflection of who you are or how you feel about your background/hometown.
References
Secondary Material
Levon, E., Sharma, D., & Ilbury, C. (2022). Speaking Up, Accents and Social Mobility. The Sutton Trust. https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Accents-and-social-mobility.pdf
Levon, E., Sharma, D., Watt, D. J. L., Cardoso, A., & Ye, Y. (2021). Accent Bias and Perceptions of Professional Competence in England. Journal of English Linguistics, 49(4), 355-388. https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211046316
Websites
https://www.lbbonline.com/news/accent-bias-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63494849
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/03/can-you-lose-accent-england-southern
https://accentbiasbritain.org/training-for-employers/
https://hrnews.co.uk/shock-8-10-employers-admit-regional-accents-influence-recruitment-decisions/