Crisp News November 2021

I don't like my accent.

Sometimes when I'm coaching people, they will say that they do not like to hear themselves played back after they have been recorded. One of the main reasons is that they have become very aware of their accent or dialect. 

How we sound is often a marker of status.

“I want to sound posh.”

 George Bernard Shaw’s Early 20th century masterpiece Pygmalion, later turned into the musical My Fair Lady, explored the relationship between class and how we speak. Higgins makes a bet that he can turn a flower seller into a Duchess just by changing the sound of her accent.

However, it is not just our voices that place us in a particular environment.

At one point in my career I worked as a Butler in a country House Hotel and you could always tell who were the real ladies and gentlemen because they knew how to treat servants. The nouveau riche had no idea and tried to order us about as though we were subservient to their will whereas the real nobility had nothing to prove.

One of the interesting outcomes of the wars in the 20th century was the mixing that groups of people who in normal circumstances would hardly have even met; Society would not have allowed it to happen. Thus, the masters and servants found themselves in close and vulnerable proximity. Language and idiom started to transfer between the different levels of Society. When the dust of conflict had settled the survivors wanted to place themselves where they would be accepted by the people with whom they were surrounded and so it became even more important to sound like the people you are part of.