BBC Voices

Aims

The aim of the poll commissioned by the BBC in 2004 was to discover how people felt about their accents and language across the British Isles. 5000 people took part in the poll.

Methodology

The poll was conducted by Greenfield online with the help of Cardiff University who helped to advise on the design of the questions. It was conducted between the 17^th of November to the 26^th, with the final sample achieving a total of 5010 respondents over the age of 15. The final sample had a male to female ratio of 49:51 with 25 – 64 year olds being over-presented compared to the 15 – 24 year olds and the 65+ being considerably under-represented. Social class data was not needed within this poll but there was a maximum amount of quotas for each of the 63 identified local areas that were used in order to ensure a large geographical spread. 97% of the sample said that English was their first language and 26% of the whole sample said that they spoke at least one language as well as English with the most frequently mentioned languages being; French (17%), German (11%), Spanish (7%), Italian (4%) and Welsh (2%).

Findings/Analysis

Participants of this poll were asked to rank celebrities in order of how pleasant their voices sounded. Sean Connery swept the board and was ranked highest with his dulcet Edinburgh accent; this was a consistent result throughout the UK. Pierce Brosnan was also high up the list though more popularly ranked were newsreaders Moira Stewart and Trinidad-born Trevor McDonald with his authoritative and prestigious voice ranking him second overall. Respondents indicated that they preferred an accent that was relatively local to them with the Scots loving Ewan McGregor’s voice and the English finding Hugh Grant’s voice attractive. Northern Irish participants were the only group that found Ian Paisley’s voice acceptable with the rest of the UK voting him ‘least pleasant’.

It was discovered that 59% of the total poll occasionally wished that they had a different accent and it was found that this number rose in Northern Ireland with two thirds wishing their accent was different. The most preferable accent was that of a standard English accent, though 7% said they would rather they had a Southern Irish accent, 12% of which came from Northern Ireland. Some said that the reasoning behind this was that people would be able to understand them better if their accent was changed though most agreed that they were proud of their accent. People identified that an accent identical to which they had was their favorites with voters considering their accent to be prestigious and helpful when searching for a job. More than 4 out of 5 people admitted to changing their accents on occasion particularly when meeting people for the first time.

From the poll 78% of the participants enjoyed hearing a variety of accents and there was a general link between pleasantness and prestige. An Edinburgh accent was valued highly on both accounts whilst Asian, Liverpool and Birmingham accents were all deemed unpleasant and lacked social status. There were 2 major exceptions though to this: a London accent was seen as helpful in business but not pleasant to listen to whilst the respondents enjoyed the sound of the Newcastle accent but did not think it would be helpful when job-hunting. A standard English accent was seen as most beneficial when applying for jobs and was put on top by English and Welsh respondents.

Conclusion

To conclude, residents in the UK clearly identified that they thought they heard a much wider selection of accents in everyday life with 78% enjoying the variety of accents though it was agreed that despite a certain amount of them wishing they could change their accent they indicated that they still preferred an accent that was fairly local to them.

Evaluation

There are some obvious flaws within this poll, despite the gender ratio being fairly even there is an enormous difference between the ages and the amount of representation each age bracket has as stated earlier. This could affect the results shown as the youngest and oldest generations were not fairly presented.