At our flagship Young Professionals event in Glasgow, Dr Christian Ilbury's keynote explored the often-overlooked role of accent bias in shaping perceptions of professionalism and competence. In this blog, he continues that conversation unpacking how accent bias intersects with inclusion, and what it means for fairness and belonging in our workplaces.
What is an accent?
Accent is a distinctive pronunciation of language and it is typically associated with a person’s identity. In the UK, an individual’s accent is arguably the primary signal of socioeconomic status. It is a major indicator of many other aspects of a person’s social background, some of them protected characteristics, including gender, race, age, sexuality, and many others. We all have an accent.
Accent as a social cue
When someone starts speaking, it is natural to infer things about the speaker’s social identity on the basis of their accent. We can often guess the speaker’s social class or where they’re from in the world through linguistic cues, such as how they say the end of the word ‘walking’ or how they pronounce the ‘t’ in words like ‘butter’. Accent can tell us a lot about someone’s social identity but it can’t tell us about how intelligent someone is nor how competent they are in a particular profession. Nevertheless, people do often make comments about someone’s intelligence or their professional ability on the basis of how they speak. This is what linguists call ‘accent bias’ – where people exhibit a preference for one accent over others – or ‘linguistic discrimination’ – where people are judged or hindered on the basis of their accent, language, or dialect.
Linguistics (the field of study that I work in) maintains that all accents, dialects, and languages are legitimate. There is no such thing as ‘correct’ English and all ways of using language are logical and valid. It does not matter whether you say ‘fing’, ‘thing’, ‘ting’, or ‘hing’ because, at the end of the day, all of them are the same thing.
Accent bias in the UK
However, society does often apply a value judgment to different ways of speaking. In the UK, there is a hierarchy of accent prestige that has existed for at least the last 50 or so years. “Standardised” accents like Received Pronunciation (or ‘King’s English’) and Scottish Standard English are consistently rated more prestigious than working class accents associated with former industrial cities (e.g., Glaswegian, Scouse), and those spoken by ethnic-minority communities (e.g., Indian, African-Caribbean).
In the Accent Bias in Britain project, researchers asked participants from the British public to listen to ten mock interview answers, and to assess the speaker's suitability for a job in a law firm. Although the speakers gave exactly the same answers, listeners over the age of 45 considered applicants with working-class London accents to be less suitable for the position than those who spoke General Northern English, Received Pronunciation, or Urban West Yorkshire English.
At current, accent and language (or social class for that matter) are not protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. While the law does not explicitly protect against accent discrimination, decisions based on linguistic differences, such as accent, can still reflect deeper biases, especially in hiring. This can unfairly influence perceptions of a candidate’s competence, despite having no bearing on their actual ability to do the job. In this way, accent could act as a barrier to social mobility – a topic we have taken up in the Sutton Trust report. In that report, we were interested in how speakers experience accent bias at different life stages. Our research shows that it is university where accent anxieties are most pronounced but there also evidence of its effects in the workplace. In the report, we found that early careers employees from the North of England were most concerned that their accent could affect their ability to succeed in the future, while 40% of this demographic reported experiencing explicit mockery or being singled out for their accent in the workplace.
For those in senior managerial roles from lower socio-economic backgrounds, 21% were worried their accent could affect their ability to succeed in the future, compared to 12% from better-off families. Similarly, 29% of senior managers from working class families said they had been mocked in the workplace for their accent, compared to 22% from a better off background.
Our report provides clear evidence of accent bias in the workplace. We argue that tackling accent bias is key in addressing social inequalities and the potential for linguistic discrimination to act as a barrier to social mobility.
What can we do?
Biases are natural cognitive mechanisms that help us process a complex world. We may have biases about particular accents. Being aware of our biases can help us keep them in check. When someone speaks, it’s important to focus on what someone says, not how they say it. Simply being aware that accent bias is a problem might help us start to address the issue. More people now are discussing this issue and awareness appears to be growing.
In an ideal world, everyone would value and embrace linguistic diversity. Accent diversity is something we should be proud of as it tells us lots about an individual’s identity. We can take some small steps in addressing linguistic discrimination by treating it in much the same way as any other type of discrimination: If you hear someone mock someone’s accent or make negative remarks about the way they speak, you should feel empowered to shut those comments down.
By simply reading this blog post, you have likely already started to think about how you can address accent bias in your own day-to-day life. The goal of our work is to empower speakers to feel proud of their accent and to be confident speaking in the way that’s most natural to them.
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Resources for ABI member firms Together with our members, we're committed to advancing social mobility across the insurance and long-term savings sector. As part of our DEI Blueprint, we're working to identify and remove barriers that may limit opportunities for individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds to enter, thrive, and progress in our industry. We encourage firms to consider how recruitment, progression, and workplace culture can be made more inclusive, particularly for those who may face systemic disadvantages linked to class or education. This includes recognising how factors like accent bias or limited access to professional networks can impact perceptions of competence and belonging. We collect data on our member firms’ efforts to support social mobility, which you can explore in our DEI Blueprint Progress Report (2023). More resources and guidance are available on our DEI Hub, where we continue to share best practices and collaborate with industry peers to drive meaningful change. |