881. Reading the news with a foreign accent (with Barbara Serra)
May 6, 2024
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Award-winning Italian journalist Barbara Serra discusses her career reading news on UK TV networks. She shares challenges of accent, identity, and English learning. Topics include accent feedback, voice training, pronunciation, global biases in news, and authenticity in broadcasting.
Barbara Serra's accent impacted trust and empathy in news delivery, highlighting the significance of the right accent in broadcasting.
Voice training improved Barbara's diction, tempo control, and 'retroflexive R,' enhancing her live TV news skills.
Barbara's accent adjustment journey shows the influence of context on accent adaptation and the importance of maintaining individuality in broadcasting.
Deep dives
Career Challenges with Accent
Barbara Sarah, an award-winning Italian journalist, discusses the challenges she faced in the UK news sector due to her accent. Despite being fluent in English, her accent made one-third of viewers feel alienated, impacting trust and empathy in delivering news. These struggles highlight how the right accent can affect audience perception and establish a connection in broadcasting.
Voice Training for Clarity
Barbara underwent voice training to improve diction and breath control for broadcasting. Working with a voice coach, she focused on enhancing clarity, controlling tempo, and rectifying her 'retroflexive R.' This training not only sharpened her speaking skills but also helped her adapt to the demanding nature of live TV news.
Contextual Accent Adaptation
Barbara's accent adjustment journey was context-driven, aligning with the audience's expectations. When transitioning to international news on Al Jazeera English, she reclaimed her natural accent after pressure to conform to a British one. The importance of context in accent adaptation showcases how different broadcasting environments influence linguistic choices.
Accepting your accent and focusing on clarity in pronunciation
The podcast delves into the idea of accepting your accent rather than trying to sound like a native speaker of English. It emphasizes the importance of focusing on clarity in pronunciation as a means of effective communication. The speaker highlights the significance of maintaining individuality in accent while prioritizing clear articulation for intelligibility and identity.
The influence of accents and international news media perspectives
The discussion touches on the impact of accents on perceptions of authority and authenticity in the media, particularly in the realms of international news coverage. It explores how British and American accents dominate global news outlets, shaping the narrative and selection of presenters based on linguistic backgrounds. The speaker sheds light on the linguistic lens through which news is conveyed, reflecting national and cultural influences on storytelling and audience reception.
Barbara Serra is an award-winning Italian journalist who has spent much of her career reading the news in the UK on various high-profile well-established English language news networks including the BBC, Channel 5, Al Jazeera English and Sky News.
Barbara has quite a specific relationship with English. It’s her dominant language but not her native language. She has a certain accent, which does place her outside the UK somehow.
So how has this affected her career as a news reader and reporter? What is the story of her English? What kind of challenges has she faced while reading the news in the UK? And what does this all tell us about learning English, what it means to improve your accent, the relationship between accent and identity, the definition of “native” and “non-native speaker”, the status of different English accents in the English speaking world?