Regional accents can hurt job opportunities

Researchers found that a job seekers accent can affect the type of job they get
Will regional accents become extinct?
If you're from Birmingham, you might as well just plead guilty

By: Lindsay Wood

Does how you talk hold you back at work? Or prevent job seekers' from getting work? Can someone's accent even affect the type of job they get? Lindsay Wood investigates.

Researchers found that a job seekers accent can affect the type of job they get

In a recent experiment, University of North Texas' director of cooperative education, Dianne Markley, and linguistics professor Patricia Cukor-Avila found that job interviewers make hiring decisions based on their feelings about the applicant's accent - especially when it comes to sales jobs.

Their study enlisted 56 executives who have some say in hiring decisions. They each listened to recordings of 10 men reciting the same 45-second passage. The 10 speakers were from different regions of the US, and the employers were asked to judge them on qualities such as personality and education level and to guess their native regions. The executives were also asked to list the jobs they might offer to each speaker.

The researchers found that job-seekers with identifiable accents, such as a heavy Southern drawl, were more often recommended for lower-level jobs that offer little client or customer contact, such as support positions. Those with a less identifiable accent, such a Midwest accent, tended to get recommended for higher-contact, higher-profile - and often higher-paying jobs in public relations and marketing.

The study was not designed to determine which accents are "good" or "bad" for job seekers, although the best jobs went to the speakers whose accents couldn't be tied to a particular region. Texas and other Southern accents got mid level jobs in the study, and the speaker with the New Jersey accent landed at the bottom.

All the speakers had bachelor's degrees, and several of them also held master's degrees and doctorates. But some of the executives had guessed that the speakers had significantly less education and placed them in low-level jobs. Some of the test subjects were embarrassed by their reactions when the speakers' backgrounds were revealed, Ms Markley said.

She added: "The assumptions that they make based on accents may actually mean that they are not making the best decision possible. I think that most of this is unintentional and it's just a matter of making people aware of it. No legislation is going to change this."

Will regional accents become extinct?

Will regional accents become extinct, leaving everyone sounding like a Midwestern newscaster? New research claims that over 50 per cent of business people feel their voice is a liability in helping them influence others.

But both researchers said that job seekers shouldn't try to change their accents. "Relax and be yourself. Your accent is part of who you are," Ms Markley said. "There is no way to know whether the person making these decisions loves your accent or doesn't."

Even the first real-time virtual newscaster, Ananova, created by the new media arm of the UK's Press Association, underwent a focus group makeover when her (her? Or it?) Queen's English voice was rejected as being "very posh". The focus group members felt as though they were being lectured to. Regional accents were also unattractive, since they brought along regional stereotypes and prejudices.

Instead, a sort of transatlantic computer voice was generated and human voices were sidelined said Mark Hird, director of PA New Media.

If you're from Birmingham, you might as well just plead guilty.

Also in Britain, Dr Bernice Mahoney, a lecturer at Worcester College of Higher Education, did some research into the effect different accents have on juries' willingness or unwillingness to trust defendants. There are many conclusions to be drawn from her report, one of which is that, if you're from Birmingham, you might as well just plead guilty.

Spectator editor Boris Johnson claimed he was fired from the BBC for having "too plummy" a voice. Mr Johnson reported that he was sacked from his role of occasional presenter of a Radio 4 political program because the station's controller James Boyle felt his voice "would frighten the horses".

Despite theories that an increasingly transient population, immigration, and the pervasive mass media are chipping away at dialects and accents, University of Pennsylvania linguist William Labov and his colleagues have found that regional accents are growing even stronger in many urban areas.

In recent years, the US Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has increasingly been asked to rule on accent discrimination - often in cases dealing with immigrants.

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