Accent triggered phobia

[bunn]

Why is it that if someone comes on the phone with a particular generic-eastcoast american accent I automatically assume that they will be not just vastly competent, but the agent of a huge and hyperefficient organisation that will scorn and trample my tiny rural British IT business into the mud? I don't know why I get that reaction, but I do.

Whereas, if someone phones with a random Eastern European or Indian accent, I tend to leap to the conclusion that they are trying to sell me stuff I don't want. Admittedly, so far this has I think been 100% correct, but I feel bad about it for some reason.

Comments

[purplecat]

I used to find, when teaching, that I had a default assumption that any student with a particular sort of London accent was trying to pull a fast one of some description. I blame this on The Bill and other programs of it's ilk. Mostly, they weren't.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I try not to do that with British accents (Isn't it hard when you are talking to a Scouser though?) but I think what lures me into doing it with the Indian/Eastern European accents is that it really is very accurate phonecall filter, in my industry.

I suppose because they are cheap places to put call centres, and they do have their own strong website development industries : the main reason to not outsource to India for British companies is culture clash and language issues, but for a company with Indian staff, that would be no barrier so it would be insanely more expensive for them to buy from the UK.

[louis-soul.livejournal.com]

I believe most people feel bad about making assuptions about people based on the way they speak, they try not to but the stereotypes are just so ingrained that it's almost impossible. Your accent is one of the main deciding points of what kind of job you have and just about everything else.
I can't tell you how strange it is for Americans to hear a black person with a British accent,at first we can't believe ther'e black, and may make loud exclamtions and comments about it untill the shock has gone. The change is so radical that people automatically believe that the black person with the British accent is vastly more educated or intelligent than the person with the American accent.

I thought what you mentioned about the eastcoast accent was amusing,here in America the eastcoast accent is generally looked down upon as being too hard to understand and and depending on where from the eastcoast either uneducated, snobby or just plain bad sounding, similar to the Southern accent.
On the other hand most British accents, except the obvious ones make one seem like there from that hyperefficient organisation etc... to American ears.
Generally people from the western states are said to sound the most competent and edcucated because of their lack of any sort of accent at all, and just the generall "computer like" blandness of their voices.
It's interesting to see what each country thinks of their own accents and the accents of other countries.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I must confess that I'm not sure my accent recognition is accurate enough to have correctly located the accent I heard! It didn't seem a very strong accent, but then I suppose it depends what your default version of English is, whether you think an accent is strong or not!

[tena524.livejournal.com]

By any chance are you from the west? As a former New Yorker moving to the Boston area, I thought I had no accent until I was informed otherwise by a native Bostonian. The same may be true for you. One of my close friends is a native Nebraskan who has often accurately placed new acquaintances by their mid-west accents, and placed them within specific regions of the mid-west at that.

I think some of the assumptions you cite are regional ones rather than national. For example, here in New England, we don't necessarily assume someone from the west is better educated. After all, just where are the Ivy League schools? East of the Mississippi.

And no, I didn't go to one of them.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Did you mean to reply to louis_soul? I don't know him/her, so I don't know if your guesses are right, I am now concerned that I've completely misplaced the guy's accent, I am not great on accents even of areas I know well!

I have a slight Devon accent, which apparently is considered by most of England an infallible sign of stupidity...

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"I have a slight Devon accent, which apparently is considered by most of England an infallible sign of stupidity..."

Often with good reason.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Oi!

[tena524.livejournal.com]

I did intend to reply to louis_soul - oops. Must be proof of how dim-witted easterners are...

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I was rung up by a Finn once, who confused me mightily.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Was it some intrinsically Finnish quality that baffled you, or the accent?

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Partly the fact that almost every letter in his name was doubled (so it wasn't, eg, Dan, but Daann.)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I do find it very funny when Americans declare that they "have no accent", when, of course, to me, they have an incredibly strong "AMERICAN!" accent. When we visited a friend in Florida, one of her work-mates was almost of the floor with laughter at the thought that, to us, SHE was the one with "the accent", and not us. "I don't have an accent!" she declared, in what was, to me, a comedy stereotype of an accent.

BTW, I have never noticed that you have slight Devon accent. Whether this is due to my general cluelessness about accents, of due to the fact that I was brought up in the Cotswolds, which also defaults to a vaguely West Country accent, I don't know.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I seem to be incapable of typing "or" and "on" tonight, since I typed them both as "of." But if you'd seen the amount of cider I've drunk this evening, you'd be amazed that I even managed "of", rather than "ghsssbbgrgrggsgggg"

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That'll be 'cos you'm a westcountry gal.... :-p

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

My boss frequently likes to send up acquaintances by performing imitations over afternoon coffee, and his "American" accent is a thing of horror. It careers wildly around the country in a single sentence, leaping from southern to northeastern. Another colleague likes to send up, how can I say this, the lower classes, by adopting an urban yoof persona, or something I think is supposed to be Yorkshire. I would rather listen to fingernails on a blackboard than these, though possibly not Sarah Palin saying "thanks but no thanks".

Let's not speak of my accent. I fear it is a goner, unless I move somewhere like Scotland or the Northeast.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I have a similar phobia about women with Glaswegian accents: I automatically assume they are frightfully competent and organised and practical, and will scorn me for a scatterbrained nitwit.

On the other hand, I instantly approve anyone with an American Midwestern accent; in fact I have started sometimes recognizing the accent by the automatic sympathy inspired by the voice.