Speaking Up: Accents and Social Mobility

Accent is one of the most recognisable signals of social background in the United Kingdom (UK) today. It can cue a listener to a speaker's ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, region, culture, or social class. For traits that are not visible, such as socio-economic status, accent is often the primary signal. Research in the United States has shown that bias against certain accents can lead to unequal access to employment, housing, and education. Despite the long history of accent-based social judgement in British society, equivalent research on its impact on life outcomes for different social groups in the UK is very limited. What impact does a person's accent have on their social mobility? What role do institutions at different life junctures--including schools, universities and employers--play in such barriers to mobility? In this report, the authors review the problem of accent and social mobility, including recent work that has examined attitudes to accents among employers, recruiters, and the general public. They then extend the focus to personal experiences of accent anxiety, sense of belonging, and implications for social mobility at different life stages. The authors examine effects of social class, region, and ethnicity, but also how intersections among these amplify barriers to mobility. The specific focus is the effects of accent bias on anxiety, sense of belonging, and experiences of bias for different social groups at four key life junctures: university applicants (largely age 17-18), university students (largely age 18-21), young professionals (largely age 21-24), and senior managers (largely age 35+). At each juncture the authors present two types of data: a quantitative UK-wide picture and qualitative commentary on these experiences gathered from each life stage through more detailed questionnaires. The authors show that accent anxiety and bias affects every life stage, but that university is a time of particularly heightened accent anxiety, as young adults approach the moment of entering a chosen career.