Accent

What is an accent then? All language is accent?

In the US, I think Ohioans and those thereabout have the "original" neutral speech. Since there has been a lot of migration of Ohioans to the West Coast, I think what you hear out there is transplanted.

At any rate, losing one's accent is an attempt to convey a sense of sounding different than most of those around you. There no doubt is a feeling that people spend too much time devoted to the eccentric sounds you make and not on what you have to say. Since it's subjective, its meaning is subjective and dependent on the particular locale where it's being used. If we have any belief in speech mainly is uttered to convey a meaning, I think "losing an accent" is quite easily understood.

"The Received Pronunciation native to southeastern England"? Oh dear oh dear.

The entire point about RP is that it is NOT the accent of the South-East or anywhere else. It is an accent that betrays no clue as to geographical origin, at least within England if not the UK. The Independent article would most certainly NOT been more "correct" if the phrase "the Received Pronunciation of southeastern England" were used (although that comment would have "read more correctly" if the sequence of tenses had not been so carelessly mangled).

Yes of course the phrase "losing one's accent" is a somewhat misleading and snobbish way of putting it -- but your highlighting is in the wrong place! These people are indeed losing an accent -- and gaining a different one. What's absurd is the phrase "if they have an accent", implying that some people have none. And yes of course one's accent has nothing to do with effectiveness in communication, blah blah blah -- so far, so banal and hackneyed.

There were surely more interesting things you could have found to say on this subject: for example, is it really true that in these straitened and supposedly egalitarian times people are beating a path to the door of elocutionists in order to learn how to speak RP, or did the Indie take that on trust from someone's press release? And how do we reconcile that with Helena Bonham Carter's allegation that RP-speaking actors are actively discriminated against for reasons of inverted snobbery?

RLG,

I can't help it. I just want to say Bravo for saying unconscious in stead of subconscious . It matters zero to the lay, but has the importance of where in the body the liver is found for the pro. :)

The phrase "losing one's accent" is distressing to phoneticians in the same way physicists hate it when people say "weight" when they mean "mass". OTOH a book call "How to lose your accent" will probably sell better than "Learn to speak Received Pronunciation" or, for different reasons, "Speak like a Radio 4 announcer".

But the idea of "losing one's accent" is distressing to leftish types for a different reason: in an ideal world it should not be necessary to disguise one's origins to succeed in life. Pending that happy day, a compromise strategy is to become bilingual in your native accent and RP and be able to code-switch. This would not be "losing your accent", rather gaining a new one in addition. My impression is this strategy is even more objectionable to some people than abandoning your original accent altogether.

Sorry, I am a long term kiwi expat in London. If I was going to "lose" anything it would be the "rising inflection" common of antipodeans which makes many sentences sound like questions.

The other thing would be pitch & while I don't want to sound like Margaret Thatcher, in business at least a lower register would be preferable to a higher one. When stressed or excited I have the sort of voice that carries across fields, again not good in a business context!

As a naturalised Brit with an "accent" (broadly continental, mostly and wrongly identified as north European) the only time I wanted to take elocution and "accent removing" lessons was when taxi drivers in a Hampshire town drove me mad by refusing to understand my pronunciation of Tower and/or Henry. As if you can muddle these up so badly to be impossible for a "true" Brit to parse.

So, my advice is, speak as well as you can and report racist taxi drivers to their employer. ;)

Living in Poland, I can say that here there's no such thing as a regional accent or a class accent. (OK, Górale, mountain-folk from the Tatras can do an accent for the tourists, older people in Upper Silesia too,) but generally, there's no distinction between rich, poor, old money, new money, scions of noble families, Poznan, Gdansk, Lodz, Warsaw or Rzeszow.

Polish vowels have but one value, they can't be drawled, slurred, exaggerated, skipped - so the one way you can tell something about your interlocutor is by his or her vocabulary.

Hence educated Poles will subconsciously pepper their speech with literary allusion, words of Greek or Latin derivation, neologisms or professional jargon.

Elocution in Poland? Heavens no. Just universities...

I understand the linguistic notion that every speaking person has an accent, but it's just a linguistic notion. In the layman's world, some people have "strong accents" and some people speak "without accents". The notion exists everywhere because it's intuitive to us. When the writer of this article uses those terms, he/she is using a language with which we're all familiar. We all know what is meant, even without the use of the somewhat convoluted phrase on Received Pronunciation.

There's nothing wrong with using those terms. Yes, it does imply that so-called "accentless speech" is superior in some way to other modes of speech. But that is not an eradicable idea. Wherever there is language, there are different varieties, and each variety carries a history and a sociocultural context. You can't change that just because you think all accents should be thought of as "equal".

There used to be a "Dress for Success" column by John Molloy, who also wrote books on that topic. The column was a middle-manager's insecurity blanket: don't let your heels show wear, don't let your socks be seen bunched at your ankle, don't have the wrong knot in your tie. The advice was for all those people who feel they have no choice but to fit in - and there are lots of those: join the herd, dress like the herd, talk like the herd, walk like the herd. The advice wasn't for significant achievers because those people have more ability.

Times have changed. You don't need to fit into the herd in such superficial ways. You still need to be in the herd, but you do that by actually fitting in with your personality and competence.

Quite right. I certainly haven't lost mine. But of the hundreds of people requesting elocution lessons through this particular website many express their wish to "lose" "soften"or "drop" their accents. It might be sad, but many of them want to do so either in order to get a job or a promotion, or because they lack confidence in the sound of their own voice. Thney shouldn't be looked down on for that. Incidentally, if anyone wants to see the report: Elocution in the new Britain: trends in private tuition, here's the link: http://www.thetutorpages.com/media-room/Elocution-in-the-new-Britain-Tre...

Thanks for the mention Sam J. As the writer of the Indy piece, can I just popint out I am a comprehensive-educated Yorkshire lad and proud of it. Maybe you're right though and I have lived in the soft south for too long.
Interestingly, as you are just back from Russia and point out how cosmopolitan contemporary London is thetutorpages report cites a number of people from overseas working in the UK who want to adopt accentless English, including one from Russia who wants to speak like Joanna Lumley and a Polish worker who wants to speak "public school posh"! Regards, Jeremy Sutcliffe @jeremysutcliffe

Old prejudices abot language take a very long time to die. The perceived value of RP in the UK, and of general American in the US makes sense if one agrees that job interviewers, broadcasting executives, and other decision-makers buy in to the prejudice about proper English. It is perfectly sensible to take elocution lessons for economic or social reasons if one understands the rationale for so doing, but the value of a dialect's accent is based on a sliding scale. Like most things in life, perception really IS reality.