You Sound Like You’re From . . .

English may be a common language, but each of us actually speaks it somewhat differently. A sweet southern drawl, for example, sounds markedly different from the rapid clip of a native New Yorker, and neither accent sounds much like the midwestern voice of the anchor on the nightly news. For better or worse, our dialects carry with them certain baggage. When we open our mouths to speak, we are conveying not only the specific message we intended to share but often also a wealth of information about who we are.

Whether we recognize it or not, most of us speak with some sort of regional accent, which is intrinsically tied to the place where we live. Our speech is also affected by ethnic background and socioeconomic status—what linguists call social dialect (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes, 2006). In any case, we might be judged harshly based on the way that we speak: Americans, for example, tend to perceive midwestern accents as the most “correct,” whereas strong southern and New York City accents are perceived as signs of lower intelligence (Preston, 1998). Such perceptions are common in almost every culture. In the United Kingdom, BBC business reporter Stephanie McGovern notes that her northern accent, which is perceived in England as being “common” or “working class,” elicits a strong reaction from viewers as well as others in the industry. “I’ve had tweets questioning whether I really did go to university,” McGovern says, “because surely I would have lost my accent if I did; a letter suggesting, very politely, that I get correction therapy; and an e-mail saying I should get back to my council estate [the British term for a public housing project] and leave the serious work to the clever folk” (McGovern, quoted in Duell, 2013).

That’s why many people whose jobs require public speaking go to great pains to shed their regional accents. Many of them head to speech coaches like the late Sam Chwat, the “speech coach to the stars” whose clients included the actors Robert DeNiro and Julia Roberts, as well as a host of corporate executives and public figures who need to unlearn their hometown accent—or learn a new one (Woo, 2011). Chwat, a speech pathologist who had shed his own thick New York accent in order to avoid confusing his clients, told The New York Times in 2010, “I have seen a notable rise in the number of self-referred corporate execs who are trying to retain their competitive edge within their corporations, be clearly understood by customers or clients who typecast or stigmatize them by their speech patterns” (as cited in Roberts, 2010). Although he made his living recognizing, learning, and teaching the varied nuances of different accents, Chwat didn’t feel that having an accent, any accent, was a bad thing. “There is no direct instruction for public speaking and standard articulation,” he noted, “and there is no penalty for speaking with an accent” (as cited in Roberts, 2010).