The Standard Southern British English accent, also known as Received Pronunciation (RP), has been historically known as “The Queen’s English”, “BBC English”, and “Oxford English” as it was traditionally associated with our university’s tutors and students. This accent, often linked to many Oxford graduates like Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and Emma Watson, has always marked elite education.
However, today, our university’s demographics has significantly changed, with 15.9% of UK undergraduates admitted last year being from the North of England, where regional accents have been historically discriminated against (including North East England, Yorkshire and Humber, and North West England).
Despite this, accounts from students across many UK universities show that many still feel self-conscious about their regional accents, with some experiencing a “sense of belonging” issue. The third article in “Borders and Belonging” explores access, elitism and the hidden class system in British accents.
Growing up in multicultural London, I’ve seen first hand the subtle shift in accents. While we can still hear distinct North, East, South and West London accents, sociologists have found the development of a new accent in ethnically diverse areas of London, replacing the cockney accent associated with working class communities – Multicultural London English (MLE). MLE emerged from intense language contact in diverse London boroughs and others point out that it is now spreading beyond London, sometimes referred to as “Multicultural Urban British English” (MUBE), as it is also heard in other big cities like Manchester. This accent has become a standard and multi-ethnic form of youth speech in the UK. While I don’t have an MLE accent, it’s the accent that I grew up hearing around me. After moving to Oxford, then Yerevan for the first term of my year abroad, this was an accent that I heard ‘home’ in the most. It was one of the few things that comforted me, while also suddenly giving me an overwhelming feeling of homesickness upon hearing it.
I know people with the MLE accent at Oxford that have told me that they censor their accent during term time and that, even though we are both from London, they don’t feel comfortable talking to me in their natural accent. Additionally, when I found out that one of my classmates was Welsh, I instantly asked him how come he doesn’t have a Welsh accent, to which he replied that he has learnt to automatically speak with an English accent in front of English people. Without uttering a word, mine and other’s accents was policing other people’s accents.
Perhaps in order to ‘relate’, I once pointed out, to someone I knew who altered their accent during term time, that I’ve been mocked for my RP accent and that at one point in school nobody was willing to befriend me because of this. They paused, then replied with “but at least you’ll get all the jobs now that you’re older”. This statement is one I think about the most when I think of language, power, and social gatekeeping.
In Ava Doherty’s recent article for the Oxford Student, “Guava Juice and Other Inheritances”, she writes “My mother wanted an English accent to save me”. This reminded me of the many times I was told off by my mother and grandmother, and told to restart my sentence all over again if I accidentally didn’t pronounce an occasional “t”. Interestingly, this was never the case when I never pronounced (and as a result, still can’t pronounce) the “r” in the middle of words, typical of received pronunciation.
In Chimene Suleyman’s essay “My name is my name”, Suleyman writes “When I was 10, a man who worked with my father called for him on the house phone. When I answered he said, ‘Oh, I must have the wrong number. How can a child that speaks like you have a dad that speaks with that ridiculous foreign mess?”.
In interactions between myself, my grandfather and others, no one has said a statement like this to me, but instead I’ve read these same words in their eyes. I’ve witnessed firsthand the quiet power of an RP English accent and how differently I am addressed compared to those who speak like my grandfather.
If there’s one ‘compliment’ I’ve received a lot, it’s that I ‘speak well’, and knowing that I hadn’t said anything profound or meaningful in these moments, I know it’s directed at the accent – that accent. It saddens me because, given that my father and grandfather have a foreign accent when speaking English, it implies that they could (and many times have) say something profound, yet in people’s minds, they will be judged against me and instead I will be deemed as the one ‘speaking well’. When I have asked others to explain their obsession with the RP accent to me, based on their answers, it seems that this accent is associated with social status, elite education and power. Others, originally from commonwealth countries, have pointed out that it’s “how the colonisers used to speak”.
Whether the UK is still an inherently classist nation can be debated, but it’s clear that accent snobbery is alive and well, especially in our higher education settings, where one in three students report being teased, mocked, singled out, and/or criticised for their accents.
Implicit bias remains with accents associated with industrial Northern English cities, with Birmingham and Liverpool being ranked lowest in terms of ‘prestige’. Dr Amanda Cole, a lecturer at the University of Essex, affirms this, noting that the UK has a “hierarchy of accents”, mentioning again that the Birmingham and Glasgow accents are associated with “low status”. Cole argues that “Accent prejudice maps onto societal prejudice”. Likewise, BBC Scotland described “Accentism” as the “last kind of prejudice.”
Across UK universities, students with Northern English accents feel pressured to change their speech to fit in, with approximately 41% worrying that their accent may hinder their future career prospects. Our university is not immune to this.
The Accentism Project has published an account from one of our students, Shelly, from Bradford. She said that “I have constantly experienced problems due to my accent. I have been asked to ‘speak properly’ by tutors when speaking in tutorials. I have been mocked by other students due to my pronunciation of certain words. I have been told that I will never get a job if I do not allow my accent to ‘mellow’- i.e. conform. In a progress meeting with tutors, I was told that my presenting skills needed work. I am a confident and skilled presenter: they just couldn’t understand or wouldn’t try to understand my accent”.
Another of our graduates, and a Sutton Trust Alumni, Ben, who is originally from a village on the outskirts of Manchester, stated that his accent greatly contributed to him feeling a lack of belonging here at Oxford. According to him, “it is certainly something that people judge you on, and they assume that it means you are not well-educated or cultured. The minute you open your mouth – literally – you have a disadvantage”. Ben felt this even before he was admitted as a student. He recalls the moment that he was waiting for his turn for the admissions interview, “I was sitting in the JCR – the common room – ready for my interview at Oxford, and when I told someone I was from Manchester they responded by saying “isn’t that all derelict factories and unemployed people?””.
Ben, who has worked as a teacher in Bolton, has also reported that other teachers have attempted to neutralise student’s accents. This is not at all unique to the school that Ben worked in. Colley Lane primary school in Halesowen (West Midlands) banned its pupils from talking or writing in Black Country dialect and a letter sent to parents said that the school was introducing a “zero tolerance” approach regarding this matter. Despite this, Head teacher John White said that “the Black Country is a fantastic region with wonderful history and we’re absolutely clear that this is not about damaging that in any way. It’s about getting the best for our children,” and further elaborated that “if children are using certain phrases, that can be confusing for them because when they come to spell that word, they are not saying it in standard English and that can hold them back.”
Regardless, a teacher’s testimony as far back as 2013 states that Ofsted asked her to soften her regional accent. Affirming this, Dr Baratta, linguist at the University of Manchester who specialises in the role of accents in professional settings and “World Englishes”, has found that northern teachers were more likely to be told to change their accent in comparison to their southern counterparts. There lies a hierarchy in British accents, and accents from the North are treated as something to be ‘fixed’ and gotten rid of. While some northerners self censor their accents, in cases when they don’t, like the teacher from 13 years ago, they are specifically demanded, or at least ‘recommended’ to.
What does it imply when the teacher who stands before a class to teach the next generation of pupils is asked to change their accent? What does that say about how the “educated” ought to sound like? What does that say about belonging and respect for all voices and people of all backgrounds in academic and intellectual settings?
It’s not necessarily just northern accents that are discriminated against in these spaces, but any accent that isn’t the “Oxford accent”.
A comment below a video of a recent Oxford Union debate, where an international student was giving a floor speech, wrote “Any English make it to Oxford? I want to hear those nice accents”. Without me having to clearly state which one, we all instantly know which accent the “nice accent” is referring to. Additionally, Holly Ellis, an Oxford graduate, clinical scientist for the NHS and the founder of ‘The Scouse Scientist’ (a YouTube channel dedicated to demonstrating that science is for all) has said that people have told her “you don’t sound like you went to Oxford”.
Clearly, in some people’s minds, there is a ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ way for an Oxford Student to speak. These testimonies are evidence that a specific accent is still associated with our university. It seems that it frustrates people, even outside our university, to hear any other accent from us.
This bias, stereotype and expectation goes beyond just accents. Since studying at Oxford, if I’ve ever said a word that could perhaps be replaced with a more ‘professional’ equivalent, I’ve been told “A woman who studies at Oxford shouldn’t speak like this.” When a guest was narrating a negative encounter she had with someone, and later in her story, swore out of frustration, someone else cut her off and said “You shouldn’t speak like this in front of an ‘Oxford girl’,” referring to me.
Of course we must strive to speak appropriately, politely, and professionally, but my first thought is, what’s Oxford got to do with it? And this is where the problem lies because speaking eloquently should be the case regardless of where one studies. Articulating oneself well is not a trait unique to Oxford students. If I studied at Manchester, or Edinburgh perhaps, nobody would even think to say “A woman who studies at Edinburgh shouldn’t speak like this” or “You don’t talk like this in front of a ‘Manchester girl’. It suddenly sounds ridiculous when I replace ‘Oxford’ with any other university, and attempt to repeat these statements. It seems these statements only seem befitting to Oxford.
I most certainly believe that it’s necessary that we are eloquent and articulate, which is precisely why it’s important to note that oracy lessons are different to elocution lessons. Oracy lessons focus on developing confident communication skills and the ability to engage in dialogue, negotiate well, and think critically across all subjects. Elocution classes however, are specifically dedicated to achieving a specific, standard, or “polished” accent. Many YouTube channels and Instagram pages are dedicated solely to this, giving tips and tricks on how to get that “Bridgerton accent”. Other videos are titled “How to speak as if you went to Oxford” and “How to get that Oxford accent”. Consequently, they imply that anyone without this accent doesn’t belong at Oxford. That it’s unbecoming to not have this accent if you study at Oxford. Considering this, we can understand where the “you don’t sound like you went to Oxford” comments stem from.
When analysing people who have worked to change their accents, David Beckham is a great example. Originally from East London, he grew up having a cockney accent but has adopted a standard, “posher” English accent over the years. In interviews from the 1990s, Beckam spoke with a strong Cockney accent, dropping “H”s and using glottal stops, but when compared to interviews even as far back as 2007, Beckam’s accent no longer reflected his working-class London roots.
A 2013 University of Manchester study found that after his move to the US and taking on ambassadorial roles, Beckam has reduced his “H-dropping” (for instance now saying ‘he’ instead of ‘e’). Linguists have noted that he even “hyper-corrects” himself by adding “H” sounds where they were not required. Others note a similar change in presenter Holly Willoughby. This isn’t unique to British celebrities, it was recently announced that Barron Trump is taking elocution classes to erase his Slavic accent.
These all indicate that even when one possess other, often greater, characteristics that symbolise a sort of status, whether studying at Oxford, being arguably one of the best well known footballers, or being the son of the President of the United States, the “wrong” accent is deemed to “taint” it all. Barron is reportedly changing his accent to help with “confidence”, but this where the issue lies – why would our accent affect our confidence, if not because we have internalised other people’s perceptions of us based on our accents.
People who speak English as their second language have said that they would feel more confident and comfortable speaking if they didn’t have a strong foreign accent. Others from abroad have told me that they wish that they spoke English like me. A much older person told me this when I was as young as ten. This has sounded so ridiculous to me given that the truth is that they can never truly sound like me. To sound like me, one would have had to have been raised in the UK and particularly in the social circles and culture I have been embedded in. Likewise, I can never truly imitate any other accent, such as an ‘international student accent’. That accent comes with all the experiences of an international school educated student. Our accents are mosaics of our experiences that have shaped us; landscapes and areas that have nurtured us; and people that have influenced us.
Therefore, through accents, and changing one’s accent, people attempt to cosplay an identity and culture associated with that accent. When someone wishes that they had a particular accent, what they really mean is that they wish they had the ‘culture’ or ‘class’ that that accent follows.
Oftentimes our confidence in a space is linked to how comfortable we feel to be ourselves and the extent of belonging we feel. If one resorts to changing their voice to feel more confident, comfortable or to fit into a space, what does that say about access to that space?
Our university has approximately 26,000 students. None of us should be expected to perform the “Oxford Student” stereotype for others. When we reject this pressure and conformity, we refuse to put our voice on trial. We subtly show others what we truly value, which should be ability, character, and contribution, not someone’s voice. Linguistic diversity is beautiful and should be celebrated in all professional and academic spaces. We all wish to live in a society and study at a university where every voice is heard, respected, and welcomed. This starts with ourselves and how we treat our own voices.