Tuesday, 8 December 2015

Attitudes to accents-Newspaper Article

My article will be targeted towards people who read the Guardian.

Does your accent determine who you are as a person? And are accents changing?

There is a huge range of different accents and dialects throughout the United Kingdom which can be analysed by the public as the best and the absolutely terrible. In my opinion and many others the accent from a person is something unique to them and it is something to be proud of but that is not always peoples views.

In the 1970's a matched guise test was done to collect the views of people on accents in the UK. The test recorded what they saw as the most impressive and influential accent being said. The outcome was that the Brummie accent was seen as the least impressive and had little influence on people being talked about a certain subject. On the other hand at the top of the leader board was the received pronunciation. Even though this was done over 40 years ago this view is still among people today and can be supported by many recent surveys in the United Kingdom.

The surveys record various views on how intelligent or friendly an accent is to name a few. The fact that people will quickly judge someone as soon as they open their mouth on who they are personally is complete nonsense in my opinion. I mean just because your from Birmingham and have a very strong accent does that mean you are not intelligent enough to get a high grade in education? obviously not. So why do people instantly judge without actually finding out about the person first?

We are judged in a variety of ways for the way we speak. In the past it was very easy to separate people into by listening to their accent but now due to how easy it is to travel around the world and the many people moving to various places to work and learn it does not become as a surprise that we are all becoming more similar in how we speak and it is more difficult now than ever to determine where someone is from as soon as they open their mouth. Nowadays when you hear a very strong accent it is usually the older generation who are holding on to their pride when they speak but soon i feel to many accents will mix and the UK will eventually start sounding similar altogether as people are not as bothered on keeping a designated accent and are repeatedly moving areas.




2 comments:

  1. Written in a very personal, level, style which could offer comfort to the reader. Good knowledge of subject conveyed in an easy-to-understand manner to the reader. To improve: perhaps write a more engaging introduction paragraph to entice the audience into reading further. Good work, on the whole

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  2. I like the way you have written this. it shows you have good knowledge on what you have written. to improve you could edit your introductory paragraph to make it more interesting.

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