Putting an Accent on British Accents

The book discusses accent prejudice in British society and seeks to dismantle the oft-held beliefs regarding certain accents and their speakers, by presenting an objective and linguistically informed analysis.

This book focuses on a common prejudice within British society: accent. In doing so, it addresses commonly believed myths regarding accent, and the stereotypes often placed onto the speakers of certain accents as a result (e.g., he’s thick, she’s trustworthy, he sounds common, and so on). The overall purpose is to create a more reasoned understanding of accent by approaching it from an objective linguistic perspective, and not from the often emotionally-driven societal perspective, which can lead to accent bias and prejudice toward the speakers of specific accents as a result. Drawing on the results of a small-scale study investigating accent bias within British teaching, this book reveals that this particular prejudice is indeed alive and well in the workplace and what we need to do going forward to address this, in a spirit of equality and inclusion.