Lexis Episode 69 - Natalie Braber & Alice Paver on accent stereotypes
Welcome to Episode 69 of Lexis. Dan is joined by guest interviewer Amanda Cole for this episode as we talk to Dr Natalie Braber, Professor in linguistics at Nottingham Trent University and Alice Paver, Research Assistant at the Phonetics Laboratory, University of Cambridge about their new paper, ‘Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts: listener perceptions of social traits and types of behaviour’.
We talk about:
Previous accent attitude research
What makes their research different and more expansive
Criminality and morality in relation to accent attitudes
The rise (and fall) of Brummie 😕
The real world, legal implications of accent prejudice
What happens in a voice parade
⚠️As part of the discussion, we touch on issues of criminality, including sexual assault⚠️
Alice Paver’s profile page:
https://www.phonetics.mmll.cam.ac.uk/staff/alice-paver
Natalie Braber’s profile page: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/arts-humanities/natalie-braber
Their paper (with David Wright and Nikolas Pautz):
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1462013/full
Some of the media coverage:
The Traitors: Why Charlotte’s fake Welsh accent could be a stroke of genius | The Independent
Cambridge study raises concern about regional accents stereotypes - BBC News
UK's hierarchy of accents: 'I thought mine made me sound stupid' - BBC News
Jorja Smith puts hometown accent on map
Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social
Contributors
Lisa Casey
blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)
Dan Clayton
blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social
Jacky Glancey
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlancey
Raj Rana
Matthew Butler
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewbutlerCA
Music: Serge Quadrado - Cool Guys
Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys