Accentism and Classism in England

Abstract

Generally, people criticize on the basis of physical appearance, race, sexual orientation, religion, and even language. Precisely, this paper focuses on one of the main forms of linguistic discrimination, which is discrimination based on accent, known as accentism. Although unbeknownst to most people, accentism is a common issue in the United Kingdom (UK), a fact quite ironic considering the large variety of accents in the nation. Indeed, this accent bias has become a major social concern of the British nation, since these prejudices are rooted in retrograde classist conceptions. Thus, the objective of the present paper is to determine whether accentism is based on social class differences. With that purpose the accents of London and Liverpool, cockney, Received Pronunciation, and scouse, will be analyzed using the literature review, historical-logical, causative, socio-linguistic, and inductive-deductive methods. Since few works deal with the topic, this research could turn into a valuable asset to raise awareness on this matter.