Not posh enough? My northern accent never hurt my career

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/17/not-posh-enough-northern-accent-career

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When I was 15 years old, I started what was at the time my dream job as a receptionist at a steelworks in the north of England. However, my fledgling career came to an abrupt halt on its first day, when, after just three hours, I was asked to leave the premises as I apparently “lacked the right image for the company”. Even as an adolescent, I knew what was meant by this: I was just too Bolton-sounding, in spite of my Chester-born dad’s attempts to soften my accent through years of childhood elocution lessons.

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To me, this anecdote, and my working-class father’s own accent prejudices, gives an insight into an issue that is far more complex than simply being about toffee-nosed RP speakers looking down on provincial glottal-stoppers. Judging people on their accents is certainly all about snobbery, but it is often inverted and multilayered, and functions on both a micro and macro level. I feel certain that, during their annual pre-Christmas family shopping trips to London, the tweed-wearing owners of the steelworks were themselves considered northern riff-raff by the shop staff at Fortnum & Mason.

I wish I could pretend that, when a teenager, I was angry at the termination of my employment. I suppose I was slightly embarrassed, but more than anything else just accepted the reality of things. Then, as now, the professional world simply reflected the prejudices of society as a whole.

Though the Profumo affair had supposedly toppled the old establishment, and the Beatles had taken the Liverpudlian twang global, in the early 70s, British TV seemed to be almost entirely populated by posh-sounding people being filmed in front of burnt-orange wallpaper. I don’t think that people with provincial accents considered the dominance of RP to be an assault or affront to their very existences, rather it was the status quo, and the ambitious made efforts to play the system: the lady who gave me the elocution lessons was always fully booked.

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Perhaps as a consequence of working in logistics, a traditionally blue-collar trade, I never felt the need to modify my accent. On the contrary, it did me favours, and when in my twenties I found myself in meetings in the East End of London, being asked by southerners (most of whom had never been further north than the Watford Gap) to repeat myself for their amusement, I would always insist upon their signing the contract first. Ridiculous though it might seem, I sounded exotic, and I found that difference could be turned to a professional advantage. To be honest, the fact that I was female was more of a curiosity than my pronunciation, so I thrived on being different. Then, as now, you either choose to conform or to stand apart from the crowd: you could win or lose either way.

Yet, for all of the social and gender-based small-mindedness that I encountered in my teens and early professional life, the world has moved on, and, to be frank, I think that the “class ceiling” argument is a load of bollocks. Don’t get me wrong, there are still people who judge others on pronunciation – and there always will be – but to suggest that having a Brummie accent is a serious impediment to career-progression in modern Britain just seems silly. Sir Peter Rigby, Julie Walters, and John Oliver all seem to be doing OK.

The ambitious made efforts to play the system: the lady who gave me elocution lessons was always fully booked

It’s real thought police stuff to suggest that small-mindedness can ever be entirely eliminated; rather, the victory comes when it is completely socially unacceptable to act on prejudices. Switch on the radio or TV these days, and you can hear a plethora of individuals with regional accents getting airtime: occasionally even myself. I suspect that 40 years ago, someone like me would have been lacking the right image for TV, just as much as for the reception of a steelworks. Today, those of us with a twang or jarring inflection are increasingly the norm, and no longer a novelty. It might take the professional world some time to catch-up, but to suggest that there is a posh test is a cop out.

The joke is that four decades after my removal from the receptionist’s chair, and as a consequence of having a business in the Midlands and having lived in London, my family in Bolton no longer considers me to sound like a local, but just some kind of generic northerner. I really need to go back to elocution lessons, but this time to make my Boltonian stronger.

• Hilary Devey’s series, Running the Shop, is on Channel 4 now. hilarydevey.com