Should you change your accent? My review of You’re All Talk by Rob Drummond

New book on accents: You’re All Talk by Rob Drummond

There's some challenging ideas here for me as a practitioner of what I still call 'accent reduction' and sometimes 'elocution', even though like Drummond I'm uncomfortable with these terms.

At the age of 13, when I came with my family from Canada to live in the UK, settling in the Midlands region of England, and speaking with a Canadian accent, I came under pressure to change the way I spoke.

The boys at my new school found aspects of my North American dialect confusing (I remember in class once using the expression 'the sticks', meaning remote rural areas far from the city, which provoked a lot of 'whuh? 'the sticks'? what 'sticks'?')

and found aspects of my accent comical. There was laughter when I referred to a duke in a Shakespeare play as the 'dook' not the 'dyook'.

One boy, (who's still a close friend 30 years later actually) would say, 'Live in Britain, Speak Our Language!' which he shortened to the acronym 'LIBSOL'. He would then helpfully chirp this new word at me when I came out with something especially Canadian. (I would sometimes helpfully chirp two words back at him, one of which starts with 'f'.)

It was the early 90s. There wasn't as much American/Canadian-accented media around as there is now: I was an exotic creature in an ordinary English town 'in the sticks'(!) And I also got teased for having ginger hair - probably more for that than for the accent, and they kept mocking me for that long after I lost the Canadian accent! Other boys got mocked for other personal quirks. Being mocked for being a bit different was part of being a teen.

But I haven't forgotten it, have I? I can still remember with pin-sharp clarity the smiling, sing-song tone my friend used, and the wagging finger, when he said 'LIBSOL!'

My accent has played a huge part in my sense of who I am - and who I no longer am, or who I sometimes am, and who I like to give the impression that I am.

And 30 years later, I'm making a living helping people change the way they sound.

But should I? Should I be encouraging people to change the way they sound? Some would claim that this is as problematic as encouraging people to change who they are... because in a sense, the way you speak IS who you are.

This is the central idea in a recent book, 'You're All Talk: Why we are what we speak' by Rob Drummond, a British professor of sociolinguistics.

This is perfect fodder for an accent and speech nerd like me. Although you don't have to be a speech nerd to enjoy it - you just need to have vocal cords. And ears.

There's some challenging ideas for me as a practitioner of what I still call 'accent reduction' and sometimes 'elocution', even though like Drummond I'm uncomfortable with these terms.

FOOTNOTE (The fact is, for one thing, these are the terms people search for on Google when they're looking for a coach like me, so I'm sort of compelled to use them if I want to attract new clients).

Despite the author's academic pedigree this is a garrulous, highly readable book, full of sly asides and chatty parentheses. It feels less like a lecture and more like sitting on a park bench with Rob, sharing a bag of chips as we try not to get caught eavesdropping on the accents of the people who stroll past us.

It covers a lot - there's a brief history of why British English (especially the accents of England) sound the way they do - one of my favourite subjects. Then an exploration of the book's central premise about the links between accent and identity; a chapter on 'accentism' and accent discrimination; the way our speech patterns subtly shift based on what's going on around us; and to finish, a reappraisal of the idea that as language changes, it gets degraded (spoiler: Drummond politely considers this to be nonsense).

One of the most interesting questions in the book is this: why do some people's accents change? and other speakers' accents stay the same?

We are what we speak

The answer, if we go by Drummond's own research, is that speakers want their accent to reflect who they are. They want their accent to express their sense of identity.

Drummond's PhD research involved working with Polish citizens in the Manchester area, to investigate to what extent these speakers picked up a Mancunian accent.

He found that Polish speakers who did acquire a noticeable Manc accent tended to be those who were planning to stay and settle in the UK. For these speakers, their changing accent was reflecting their development of a British/Polish identity in their adopted home.

Meanwhile, those speakers who were aspiring to one day return home to Poland, were less likely to pick up Manchester pronunciations, and retained a distinctly Polish accent when speaking English. It's as though they were trying to retain or affirm their Polishness, by sounding unmistakeably Polish, even when using the local language.

As Drummond puts it:

'The way we speak can be a way of performing and demonstrating pride in where we come from'

Another quote that stood out for me was this:

'We create who are, in part, through the way we speak... we also create the social world that surrounds us'

This is where the book's main theme, of celebrating the diversity of accents, speech habits and voices, rather than elevating one particular sound as better than or preferable to any other, offers a challenge not just to me, but to the whole accent reduction 'industry', if we can call it that.

Accent ‘reduction’?

Drummond holds back from criticising people who seek out the services of an accent reduction coach like me; he and I are in agreement on the point that individuals who are struggling due to the way they speak can't wait for the world to change. Instead they need to do what's within their control to make their experience easier.

But he's pretty withering about some of the language used to promote accent reduction services - he quotes several of my competitors' websites with disapproval (not mine, thankfully! I was cringing as I read this section of the book but I seem to have got away with it) as the talk about accquiring an RP (Received Pronunciation) accent in order to 'sound educated'; how to 'get rid of' a foreign accent; and 'accent reduction' being a means to 'improve', 'fit in', 'get ahead'...

Now, I agree with Drummond on this point. The tone of some of this material is pretty clumsy; some US companies, in what to my ears is a particularly aggressive brand of 'live-your-dreams' marketing, state quite baldly that you won't be able to get on in life unless you sound like a native-born American.

I agree that even the term 'accent reduction' is problematic, as it can imply that there is such a thing as speaking without an accent (there isn't) and that having 'an accent' carries a social stigma in certain circles (it shouldn't).

In my initial conversations with potential clients, I'm always careful to set out that I actually don't see it as my job to tell you how you should speak. I don't think that one variety of spoken English is 'better' than another: all that matters is clear English, and whether one kind of English is 'clear' depends very much on who the listeners are.

I aim to offer speakers a choice - so that when the situation requires it, they are able to 'style-switch', as Drummond calls it, and be easily understood by listeners who are unfamiliar with the speaker's habitual sound.

Effective listening?

Even this approach, however, is problematic for Drummond: he sees it as speakers having to bow to pressure to 'fit in', and absolves the aforementioned listeners of any responsibility to, well... listen.

'If we want to make society fairer in relation to spoken English, then we all need to get a lot better at listening... I would like to suggest that being understood is not entirely, or even mostly, the responsibility of the speaker. It's only natural that if someone speaks in a way which we aren't familiar with, it might take a bit more effort to process what they are saying but once we make that effort and become more familiar , the issues will disappear'

Hard to disagree with this: but how to address the problem? That phrase, 'a bit more effort' is somewhat disingenuous. How much effort is 'a bit more effort'? When listeners say 'sorry, what?' or 'sorry, I didn't catch that', they ARE making a bit more effort to listen. When they make 'the face' (the polite but strained expression people make when they're trying really hard to follow what you say ,without you noticing that they're struggling) they're making a bit more effort.

But it's this experience of making listeners work hard that differently-accented speakers find so exasperating. It's why they seek me out - so that they can address the miscommunication from their end, which is the only end they have some control over.

One of the pillars of my approach to effective speaking - whether or not accent is an issue - is that speakers must do ALL the work. We must make the job of listening as easy as possible. That means adapting to the needs of the listener, in terms of intonation, pace, expressiveness, volume - and in terms of using pronunciation that this particular listener will easily recognise. For most listeners in a UK context, that pronunciation is generally something close to RP.

Drummond raises a good point though: accent reduction almost never happens in reverse. RP speakers who are looking to connect with non-RP speakers tend to be mocked as 'fake' for adapting their accent to suit the audience: Drummond uses the example of former UK Chancellor George Osborne on one occasion slipping temporarily into 'mock-ney' working-class accent when meeting staff at a supermarket warehouse.

This is where we get into the territory of identity and authenticity: we don't expect Eton-educated politicians to 'put on' a temporary working-class identity, and Drummond's book says that neither should speakers be expected to 'put on' the identity that comes with an accent that is not authentically theirs.

My response to this is that I only work with people who WANT to adapt the way they speak.

‘Why do you want to change your accent?’

One the first questions I ask in an initial consultation is: 'what's motivated you to look into this kind of work?'

It really helps to know right from the start whether a person has made their own decision to change their accent, or whether the pressure comes from outside - if their boss or their spouse or their parents have insisted that their accent is a problem.

I get the best results with the former type of client. They actually want to change. Often, people who are working with me due to outside pressure don't do well. Sometimes, they simply don't complete the course. I can't force someone to change, and while I strive to deliver the training they've paid for, I don't insist they change if they don't want to. (NOTE: I don't give refunds mid-course!!)

For them, it's not about faking an accent in order to pretend to be someone they're not. Most commonly, the people who come to me looking to 'reduce' their accent (in other words, sound more RP) have already developed a form of English identity, and they want to speak with a sound that matches that identity. They've lived in the UK for years, they're UK citizens, they've often got an English spouse, their children have English accents. But when they meet new people, they get asked, 'where are you from?'

And they want to say 'here! I know you mean 'where's your accent from' but I'm from here!'

So if you're like the people in Rob Drummond's study of Polish people in Manchester who were planning to stay in the UK, and lean into their UK-Polish identity - but you want to speed up the gradual process of picking up the local accent - I can help you.

I'm not going to tell you how you SHOULD speak, but I can help you sound the way you want to sound.

I promise you will never ever hear me say the word 'LIBSOL' :)