BBC Voices Poll - November 2004

 

Aims and methodology:

To find out how people in Britain felt about accents in the U.K. They conducted an internet survey of 5000 people to find this out, using celebrities that speak the accents as representatives. The final sample yielded 5,010 respondents (15+) who completed the entire survey. The final sample nationally was 49:51 Male : Female. There was a 'middle age spread' in the sample, with 25-64s proportionally over-represented and 15-24s and the 65+ under-represented. Social Class data was not collected. 97% of the whole sample said that English was their first language. 26% of the overall sample said they spoke at least one language as well as English.

Findings and analysis:

Sean Connery with his Edinburgh accent came out on top, followed by Trevor McDonald with a Trinidadian accent. Pierce Brosnan with his Irish and slight American accent also scored high up on the list. People enjoy listening to accents local to their own, for example Scots said they prefer Ewan McGregor's Perthshire accent, the English found Hugh Grant's accent, people in Wales preferred listening to Welsh actor Richard Burton and newsreader Huw Edwards, while those in Northern Ireland found Terry Wogan's Limerick accent preferable.
The most wished-for accent is a Standard English accent, but 7% said they would rather have a Southern Irish accent (12% in Northern Ireland).
59% people in the survey wished at least occasionally that they had a different accent.
Throughout the country, people voted "an accent identical to your own" as one of their favourite accents.
95% of people in Northern Ireland, 79% in Wales and 87% in Scotland think of themselves as having at least a moderately strong accent. Only 63% in the east of England and 64% in the south think their accent is moderately strong. Generally people in the north and west of the UK identify with "having an accent" more than those in the south-east.

Conclusions:

People like accents local to their own.
Scottish accents are consistently voted as most pleasurable to listen to by the general public.
Stereotypes and associations have a strong link when it comes to attitudes towards accents.

Evaluation:

The use of celebrities to rate accents can bring in bias, especially as a conclusion drawn from the survey is that people prefer accents local to their own, for example an anomaly in the results shown that Northern Irish participants were the only group who found Ian Paisley's voice acceptable - his was voted 'least pleasant' by all other areas of the UK.