"It is important that we teach children that, to get on, they must speak Standard English with an RP accent."
Every single place on Earth will have people speaking with different accents, it's just the way that it is. So why should we try and get everyone to pretty much talk with almost exactly the same style? Granted it would make life significantly easier if everyone spoke in almost exactly the same way, but surely this would also mean that no one would be their own person.
No one can help their accent, my accent will differ immensely from someone who is from the North, and neither one of us and help that. It's just a fact. But should people really get hate from the accent in which they speak? After all, from where they are from, their accent is normal, and ours is the odd one. But how far are we willing to discriminate someone based on their accent?
Richard Spillett wrote an article on how workers are having to 'posh up' how they sound in order to avoid discrimination. Within this article it states:
"Prejudice against certain accents is the 'last taboo', according to Manchester University linguist Dr Alex Baratta, who says people are made to feel 'fake' when they have to 'posh up' while talking.
Dr Baratta is calling on employers to promise that job applicants' accents will not be used against them in the same way as gender, sexual orientation, religion, age and race are ignored.
He said: 'We should acknowledge that any form of workplace discrimination, to include accentism, should not be tolerated in a society which seeks to be more inclusive."
Is it really fair to make people feel like they have to change their voice in order to feel like they belong, to feel like they're safe? Is this really the kind of message that we want to be sending out to children? That in order for them to fit in and be a member of a specific group, they have to change the way they speak?
Another article by Victoria Woollaston talks about how "Scousers have the 'least intelligent and least trustworthy' accent - while Devonians have the friendliest"
The article shows the percentages that each accent has in regards to friendliness. But by the logic of this article, Received Pronunciation isn't the most friendly and so shouldn't be the accent we try and get everyone to speak. In fact, the best accent that would be most likely to help people get along would be the Devon accent, or even Liverpool.
It would seem that everyone has their own opinion on which accent is the nicest one. But it does seem a bit silly to start questioning people's intelligence and friendliness based entirely on their accent, you can't hear someone's voice and instantly decide whether or not they're intelligent.
Overall, it isn't important that we teach children that in order for them to get along they must speak with Standard English with a Received Pronunciation accent because there are plenty more important things that should come into consideration for children to get on. Being a part of a group does not entirely revolve around your voice or how you speak, it is simply just how you are, how you treat people.
Having a voice that is deemed as 'posh' doesn't make you more important than anyone else, but there is this misconception that having a posher accent gives you more prestige and can be very intimidating for others, making people with posher accents have perceived power. It is because of this perceived power that we believe that if we do not share this accent, we are inferior. But again, is this the kind of lesson that we really want to be teaching children?
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