Last year, Dr Alex Baratta, a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Manchester, published research showing that trainee teachers with regional accents are often told by their mentors to try and speak “the Queen’s English” when in the classroom.
However, new findings from Dr Baratta’s work, revealed last week, show that students think otherwise.
Research involving the views of 55 students of a range of ages, class levels and ethnic groups at three Manchester schools – a state primary, a state secondary and a private primary – found an overwhelming respect for the diversity of accents.
Students made comments such as “I don’t think there should be a standard accent because it’s wrong to discriminate”, “you should just talk how you want to” and “people shouldn’t have to change themselves”.
Dr Baratta’s previous research found that trainee teachers often felt judged for how they speak. One participant from the Midlands claimed that a mentor with a southern accent said that she’d be “best to go back to where you came from”, in relation to her pronunciation of “a” and “u”, as in “bath” and “bus”.
Dr Baratta said: “The trainee teachers I spoke to believe that they are being judged for how they speak and not what they say and asking them to modify their accents made them feel inferior. There is a respect and tolerance for diversity in society, yet accents do not seem to get this treatment – they are the last form of acceptable prejudice. One teacher told me that it makes no sense that teachers have to sound the same, but teach the children to be who they are.”
Despite the new findings, the feeling that there is a “teacher voice” is still alive and well according to Dr Baratta, with many teachers still feeling the need to modify their voices.
One teacher from Bristol said: “The Bristolian accent has lots of connotations, like village idiot, yokel, farmer – this wasn’t doing me any favours because all you’d hear is the accent and it was like ‘he’s thick’.”
Another teacher from Salford who admitted to modifying her accent closer to Received Pronunciation said she did so due to a desire to be “a model to the girls”.
The only aspect of pronunciation which teachers mentioned focusing on, and students explained they were criticised for, was the glottal stop – perhaps an indicator of a modern “non-standard accent”, according to the research.
Dr Baratta added: “For the current generation of British children, one’s accent is clearly representative of who a person is. Therefore, a desire to ‘keep it real’ is felt amidst the students’ clear respect for diversity – in this case, linguistic diversity.”
For more information on Dr Baratta’s work, visit www.accentpride.co.uk