Why you win when I don't lose my accent

I recently became an Ambassador for the Protect Accent Campaign after being approached by Goodie Okechuku the founder of the campaign. As a D&I professional I could see that accent was not an area of diversity often addressed. Yet it can be an identifier of your ethnic, regional, national or social class identity and all aspect of our identity are important for all of us. People who may speak English as a second or even third language, have multiple degrees and a rich lived experience might have their intelligence questioned simply for the way they pronounce a language which isn’t their own. Accent like skin colour is often used as an identifier of whether you belong and your value. However this form of prejudice (ironically) seems not to discriminate in that is also applied people who speak English as a first language, but with a local dialect rather than the “Queen’s English” ie received pronunciation (RP).

Alex Scott a BBC Sports presenter recently responded to criticism from Lord Digby Jones for not pronouncing the "g" at the end of verbs ending ing rowing, fencing etc. She rightly pointed out that this was how people spoke where she grew up in E14 the next postcode along from me. Spelling in English is mainly standardised, although the US has chosen to modify the spelling of some words they have inherited. And of course the modern world can accommodate these differences along with accents from Canada, Australia and New Zealand but when it comes to social class some of those those from the more privileged class will insist on conformity through ridicule of disapproval. But English has never been static accents, pronunciation even words within it have changed through the centuries and will continue to do so. Middle English before the great vowel shift during 1400 and 1700 sounds different to the English of today and the pre conquest Anglo Saxon dialects are pretty much unintelligible to a modern English speaker.

Quick bit of history, rather than being quintessentially English, RP is actually partially imported. The French speaking Normans used language as a cultural barrier (education, laws etc all in French or Latin) to keep the defeated English disenfranchised after the conquest in 1066. The Norman elite kept this up until the 100 years war with France where they wanted to rule France as well as England. They then stated speaking English so they could co-opt the English as foot soldiers and long bowmen for foreign wars and deliver rousing battle speeches for Shakespearean plays years later. However to maintain a cultural barrier between themselves and the disenfranchised English, the elites spoke RP English which would include vocabulary of French and Latin origin speaking with a softer Romance sounding accent than a guttural sound of Germanic based English. So if you wanted to be a social climber, you changed your accent to hide your origins and spoke like the nobility.

My accent (unlike my skin colour) could be changed with some effort on my part, but I won’t because it also tells an important personal and shared history that isn’t immediately visible. It tells the story of a boy who grew up in East London inheriting his accent from elders of a proud working class community who would reference the many sacrifices that the Eastend endured so that Britain could be great. From the dockland workers who carried Britain’s imperial maritime trade, to the factory workers who fueled the industrial revolution and the families who looked out for each other during the horrors of the Blitz. My ancestors are from Ghana and they also had to endure so Britain could be great. So Eastend history resonates with me and makes me proud as well, because it’s my home and where I grew up. East London wasn’t easy then and it still isn’t easy for a lot of people here now but “well you just had to get on with it back then didn’t you” as the old folks used to say to me in their cockney accents. 

So when I was mimicked for my accent, whilst working in the Foreign Office, I decided I would rather change my career aspirations than try and mask my story to perhaps appear more learned or sophisticated. I reasoned that it wouldn’t change my level of my education and even if my colleagues did start to perceive me as “well educated” because of RP then it would only reinforce the lie that you couldn’t sound working class and be educated. Over the years my accent has probably modified, but it is still part of my identity and it’s valuable so I won’t intentionally suppress it. Rather I’ll speak for myself and for those like me who are excluded in my authentic voice to those who care to listen and then smile graciously as I’m told how articulate I am. 

My accent is my voice and both are valuable, this belief has been further reinforced for me of late. Since the death of George Floyd colleagues and contacts both old and new have approached me at work or on LinkedIn to better understand why we all appear to live in the same world and yet experience it so differently based on skin colour. And more importantly they want to hear me speak on what could be done differently.  The problem is we work in echo chamber silos of suppressed voices and accents subtly and sometimes not so subtly policed. So when we have a moment when the unheard or suppressed voices finally have a chance to be heard, it often delivers some shocking results. This could be hearing your Black friend’s, colleague’s or family member’s experiences and feelings that they don’t tell you about, because they think you won’t understand. Or it could be a paradoxical referendum result which no one saw coming. The solution to these monochrome silos is authenticity of voice, which means being inclusive of our different accents. If I can be comfortable enough to feel I can still belong speaking in my own voice, then you as my colleagues and my employer gain. You gain the full wealth of the insight that my lived experience has given me. You gain my creativity gained from the barriers I’ve had to navigate to get here. You gain my ability to connect with those you struggle to reach and you gain my trust because you respect and value my difference just as I do. 

However if the dilemma of wanting to embrace diverse accents but also needing people who sound “polished” gets you all in a two and eight (bit of a state) then consider what you may be gaining or losing by preferring we all keep to a standard RP accent. Sure you can have conformity and people that aim to sound as close as they can to the established ideal of the well suited corporate professional. But what do you lose? You lose part of what makes that individual unique, their independent thinking and worse they lose a part of themselves. Yes of course we need to be able to understand each other and so what should one do when faced with an individual with an accent that is unfamiliar and difficult to hear at first attempt? Well why not try listening a little more carefully perhaps? After all they might well have something insightful to say.