Have you ever been judged because of your scouse accent?

Scouse is an accent that is negatively portrayed in the media and often considered unpleasant, uneducated and unclear.   In 2004 BBC conducted an online poll involving 5000 participants,  to explore attitudes towards Scouse and other accents in the British Isles.

The poll has shown that the Birmingham and Liverpool accent is considered as lower class and unpleasant. The participants also had to say how pleasant they found the accents of various celebrities. For example, the Liverpudlian accents of Paul O’ Grady and Cilla Black were considered unappealing. This demonstrated the stigma associated with particular accents and how people are judged negatively based on stereotypes and the way they speak.

In-group and Out-group:

Every community consists of different social groups and its members may have a sense of superiority. Researchers suggest a social group is a group of persons who have similar features, a feeling of unity and there is an ongoing interaction between its members [1].

Consequently, a social group might consider the external group less valuable. This phenomenon leads to the creation of groups in a community; the in-group and the out-group. An in-group is a social group that a person belongs to and is a member of it. The out-group, on the other hand, is a social group to which a person does not belong to or identify with it.

• Why do these groups appear?

A group and its members often share the same emotional involvement and pride in their group [2]. These groups can often be formed on the basis of various characteristics, such as gender, dialects, accents, or religion. When these characteristics are shared by members of the group, it creates an ‘in-group’; if members differ on these characteristics then an ‘out-group’ is created.

Belonging to these social groups plays an important role in shaping members’ feelings, thoughts and behaviours which result in differing language attitudes and stereotypes.

Why is it important to consider them?

The differentiating between us and them is followed by negative attitudes towards other social groups because of the preference towards an in-group [3] and the lack of the same preference towards an out-group. The in-group and out-group phenomena are quite important as they can lead to the ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ distinction.

These theories explain the reasons for negative attitudes towards the Scouse speakers and the in-group favouritism towards the Scouse accent. Therefore, members of a certain group have a tendency to assign more status to their own linguistic traits as a result of the in-group superiority.

Moreover, the in-group and out-group phenomenon working in both directions in case of Scouse. Scouse accent is so distinct that Scouse speakers may be considered by other British speakers as an outgroup hence the negative attitudes towards them. In addition, Scousers see themselves as an ‘in-group’ and will develop a stronger attachment to their own speech.

Language attitudes:

Researchers define a language attitude as a favourable or unfavourable reaction towards a language, dialect or accent. As well as an attitude towards the users of those languages or dialects [4]. Furthermore, language attitudes can be analysed according to two scopes, status and solidarity [5]. Status of a language is relative to socioeconomic status such as being uneducated and solidarity is related more to the in-group loyalty.

Thus, language is a part of the social identity and its speakers show more solidarity to their own linguistic group which results in the positive evaluation of their in-group features. Therefore, Scousers evaluate their accent as pleasant because of their solidarity with their ingroup features, but out-group members evaluate it as uneducated relative to the socioeconomic status as non-standard speakers are associated with low status.

Characteristics of language attitudes:

Language attitude can be divided into stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination.

Stereotypes are personal subjective attitudes of a social group of people which lead to negative or positive attitudes and treatments of others [6]. Prejudices are particularly negative feelings about a group based on differences in terms of language use which lead to negative behaviours and linguistic discriminations. Discrimination is a negative or positive behaviour towards a certain group [7].

Therefore, peoples’ behaviour is determined by their belonging to a different social class confirming a stereotype of their group.

Stereotypes are used to judge the out-group more than the in-group and social categorisation can generate a homogeneity of the outer social group [8]. Social categorisation is the process by which members are positioned into groups depending on the same characteristics. Homogeneity of the outgroup is the perception of the outgroup members that ingroup members are similar to one another more than the ingroup members.

 

Through the process of identifying themselves in in-groups and out-groups, members of the in-group judge members of the out-groups as uneducated due to differences in linguistic features, showing the perception of the out-group as being homogeneous.

 

The reason of language attitude:

Another significant reason is that there is no preparation from the culture to accept the differences of others [9]. In addition, it leads to misunderstanding others because people perceive others in terms of their personal lifestyle and not their context. Therefore, one of the main reasons for negative attitudes towards other social groups is the value of in-group superiority and the value of the out-group as inferior.

Consequences of language attitude:

Attitudes cannot be seen but can be confirmed through behaviours.  Consequently, language attitudes play a major role in shaping the reaction amongst members of different social groups.

For example, negative language attitude can affect how people treat each other’s resulting in discrimination and evaluation of different languages, dialects and accents [10]. Furthermore, language attitude can affect how one language community regards the social status of another social group (out-group).

How language attitudes are related to our survey:

It is vital to consider negative attitudes towards languages, accents and dialects as some social groups are evaluated because of their way of speaking. For example, speakers with standard variety are considered to be better than the speakers of nonstandard variety. As the Scouse accent is considered as a non-standard variety, most people evaluate it as uneducated and unclear.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that there is an accent discrimination in different parts of Merseyside. Peoples’ reaction and discrimination are led by the assumption that members of an out-group are different due to differences in language features such as accent and dialects.  As a result, people have been discriminated against due to their regional accent.

Moreover, the way of evaluating this particular social class is a consequence of identifying herself with a different social group. These findings signalled that an accent as a social factor can impose an identity, other people’s reactions and influence social behaviours towards a person.

 

Edited by Wala Karahalak

[1] [2] Tajfel, H. and Turner, J. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In: S. Worchel and W. Austin, ed., Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Chicago: IL Nelson-Hall., pp.10-30.

[3] Mahajan, N., Martinez, M., Gutierrez, N., Diesendruck, G., Banaji, M. and Santos, L. (2011). The evolution of intergroup bias: Perceptions and attitudes in rhesus macaques. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, [online] 100(3), pp.387-405. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280966 [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].

[4] [5] Oakes, L. (2013). Beyond diglossia? Language attitudes and identity in Reunion. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, [online] 34(1), pp.30-45. Available at: https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.hope.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/01434632.2012.697466?needAccess=true [Accessed 1 Dec. 2018].

[6] [8] [9] [10] Eiser, J. (1984). Attitudinal judgement. New York: Springer, pp.109-102.

[7] Bourhis, R.Y. and Maass, A. (2005). ‘Linguistic prejudice and stereotypes. In: U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K.J. Mattheier and P. Trudgill (Eds.) Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, 2nd edition. Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, pp. 1587-1601.