Accent bias in Britain

• Background

  Based on Howard Giles' study and Hywel Bishop, Nikolas Coupling and Peter Garrett who evaluated responses to 34 accents from the UK where there results were similar to Giles

  In 2019, Devyani Sharma, Erez Levon and Yang Ye replicated the study again
• Methods


  Participants were asked what they thought of accents such as Belfast, Australian or Newcastle but not to evaluate speakers.

  Used the same accent labels as Giles but split London into Cockney, Essex and MLE and split Asia into Chinese and Indian and expanded Standard English.

  Surveyed 821 pots from a representative sample of Britain

  Accents ranked in a scale 1-7 based on "how much prestige do you think is associated with this accent?" And "how pleasant do you think this accent is?"