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 

People with working-class accents more likely to be suspected of committing crimes | UK criminal justice | The Guardian 

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