Regional accents are erased through class-aspirational self-suppression
Evidence
The East Midlands accent, lacking urban glamour, lilting lyricism or rustic romanticism, is one of the most unloved in the UK. It is heard so rarely in popular media that it isn’t recognised enough even to be disdained. I must confess that I have a dog in this fight. I grew up in the East Midlands, and when I left university I was described by a sympathetic lecturer as having a “speech and accent problem”. The accent gradually disappeared, as I learned to suppress the lazy Leicestershire consonants and articulate my speech in something closer to so-called received pronunciation — an achievement loaded with ambivalence and shame. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1348
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to ch22 in this same book on class mobility’s double betrayal and the shame of ‘passing’ — Fisher privately registers the same class-traveller psychology he analyzed in Potter. — connects to: Working-class representation traps the speaker in an assigned social place — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1101; Retaining a regional accent resists class subordination rather than reactionary localism — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1349; Arabic accents delineated ethnic and class distance in Egyptian social hierarchies — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 359 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Language changes through class culture acquisition and hegemonic national languages
#corroborates(0.82) - Arabic accents delineated ethnic and class distance in Egyptian social hierarchies
#exemplifies(0.80) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 359 - Class conflict extends into language itself through competing accents on every sign
#contradicts(0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1015