Stereotyped Reactions to Regional Accents

The voices of four speakers, reading the same passage, were presented to two groups of subjects—one group from the north of England, the other from the south. Both groups rated the speakers on various personality traits. Unknown to the S s, there were only two speakers, each of whom recorded the passage twice, once with a London accent and once with a Yorkshire accent. It was thought that if there were any differences in the assessments of the Yorkshire and London speakers, these would be based on the S s' attitudes towards the particular group as identified by its accent. The results showed that both groups of S s tended to hold the same stereotyped attitude towards each accent group but did not regard either of them particularly more favourably than the other. These results were compared with previous findings concerning the attitudes of majority and minority groups towards one another.