In the article “Yorkshire named top twang as Brummie brogue comes bottom”, the author explains regional as well as social stereotypes based on accents. An experiment was carried out whereby “researchers asked 48 volunteers to look at photos of female models while listening to recordings of women with different accents describing their lives.” The aim of this experiment was to pinpoint the various stereotypes made by people. A common stereotype was “people with the distinctive nasal Birmingham accent were seen as stupid while those with a Yorkshire twang were considered clever.”Furthermore, to improve results models of equal attractiveness were chosen.
The results gained by the experiment were unbelievable due to many reasons. I found it difficult to understand that when nothing was said at all was perceived as being more intelligent than someone saying something in a Birmingham accent. Having read through the entire article, I understood how this was possible. A prominent stereotype is “people associate Birmingham with criminal activity, and they associate criminal activity with low intelligence.” I feel this stereotype to be rather absurd as everyone of a certain community is painted with the same brush. This interlinks with content covered in class, especially in the last two reading of “Mother Tongue” and “Good and Bad English”. Good and bad english touches on an individual perspective of the quality of the English spoken, perhaps carrying out the experiment on people who aren’t British citizens or residents may have altered the results. Mother tongue, similarly has similar effects as the article as it deals with people understanding others based on their accents.
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