Open your ears: dismantling higher education’s sonic straitjacket

“UK universities name-drop Stormzy while ensuring no one who sounds like him actually breaks through British academia’s accent ceiling. Aymen Idris tackles HE’s open secret: accent discrimination A murmur cut through the lecture hall. A visiting American academic sitting beside a colleague in front of me had just heard a London-born, Black student deliver a talk. “Remember when English academics actually sounded… English?” he whispered. The comment was met in cool, measured Oxbridge tones from the colleague beside him: “The BBC is dying and RP is dying with it. Long live Multicultural London English.” In that fleeting exchange, a century of British cultural anxiety was distilled into two sentences. It was a reminder that while the aesthetics of diversity might be celebrated in today’s academia, the sonic landscape of power remains unchanged. The tyranny of Received Pronunciation (RP), that elusive, class-bound accent of the British elite, for so long heard across the BBC, lawyers’ chambers, the civil service and, yes, the halls of academia, continues to cast a long shadow, haunting scholars who speak with the melodic cadence of the British working class, the rhythmic intonations of diasporic migrants, or the distinctive inflections of the British Isles, from Geordie to Glaswegian, Brummie to Belfast. This is not merely about sound; it is about class, power, belonging, and the unspoken hierarchies that determine who is heard, who is respected, and who is deemed to possess intellect. In the hallowed halls of UK universities, a velvet-gloved form of exclusion persists, masquerading as tradition and policed by those who mistake a specific elocution for erudition itself. The unspoken hierarchy Decades after my days as an undergrad in the late 1990s, when Black and Asian scholars were branded ‘aubergines’ or ‘aeros’ for daring to sound middle-class, RP or its modern, diluted derivatives, such as Standard Southern British English (SSBE), still serve as UK higher education’s unofficial entry fee. To some, myself included, it represents an accent ceiling, invisible but impenetrable. Academics and students understand this intuitively: linguistic assimilation is not a choice but a strategic imperative. Our universities pay lip service to diversity: name-dropping Stormzy, the grime star who speaks Multicultural London English (MLE) while pocketing his donations , but RP remains the price of admission to the senior common room. “There’s no chance in hell for anyone who actually sounds like him [Stormzy] making it in academia,” a colleague of Afro-Caribbean heritage puts it, bluntly. One might think that, given the vast ethnic, cultural, and economic diversity across UK campuses, we ought to be accustomed to a rich symphony of accents in lecture halls and laboratories. Yet most students can graduate without ever hearing a lecturer speak in the authentic dialects of the British African diaspora, a Scouse brogue, or a Geordie lilt. This is representative of trends in wider British society. A 2019 study found that accents remain a powerful marker of class and status, with speakers of regional accents often perceived as less intelligent. The British sonic landscape The UK has around 40-45 major regional accents, here’s a very small selection listed in the order they feature in this post. Rishi Sunak’s final speech as PM. Received Pronunciation (RP) : Often referred to as “the Queen’s English” or “BBC English,” this accent was historically associated with the upper classes and southern England. Listen to RP Geordie : The Newcastle accent from North-east England is one of England’s oldest dialects. Listen to Geordie Glaswegian : An urban Scottish accent, heavily influenced by Gaelic. Listen to Glaswegian Brummie : A Birmingham accent. Listen to Brummie Belfast : A Northern Irish accent. Listen to Belfast Standard Southern British English (SSBE) : A modern southern accent that is considered less formal than RP. Listen to SSBE Multicultural London English (MLE) : A contemporary accent that emerged in inner-city London, blending Cockney, Caribbean, and West African influences. Listen to MLE Scouse : A Liverpool accent. Listen to Scouse How did we get here? “It’s classism, stupid!” an African colleague once told me, summarising the issue with brutal efficiency. And of course, he is right. RP is a relic of British class prestige inextricably linked to aristocracy, empire, and a very specific, narrow idea of Englishness. RP was never a natural, regional accent; it was an invented one , cultivated in the public schools and Oxbridge colleges of the 19th century as a deliberate marker of elite education and class distinction to signal membership of the upper and ruling classes. It was a matter of social engineering, not the evolution of the language. For many scholars, especially those from ethnic or white working-class backgrounds, linguistic assimilation demands a Faustian bargain of accent switching, adopting RP as the currency of credibility. The psychological cost of this performance is steep. It demands a form of cultural erasure – a quiet un-becoming of the self every time one enters a lecture hall, a seminar room, a department meeting, a job interview. This constant self-monitoring, the split-second recalculations of every vowel and inflection, leads to what sociologists call linguistic insecurity : the internalised belief that one’s natural voice is inferior and inadmissible. Over time, this produces fractured identities – scholars who move through the world as two different people, never fully at home in either register. It is a quiet, draining labour that is never acknowledged in workload models, never counted in promotions criteria, never visible on any equalities monitoring form. Yet it is exacted, daily, from those whose voices do not fit. The problem with pragmatism Defenders of the status quo, and there are many in academia, often retreat into pragmatism. They argue that linguistic assimilation is a necessary evil, sometimes citing studies suggesting students distrust lecturers with strong non-RP accents. And while that might be true, capitulating to prejudice is not a solution; it is a surrender of academia’s core mission to challenge preconceptions and expand horizons. To accept this is to argue that students in the 1950s were right to distrust female academics, so women should not have been hired to teach. It is a bankrupt argument, and they all know it. My message is not one of blame for those who code-switch to survive, but a challenge to the system that forces that choice. Other colleagues argue, more plausibly, that academics, being human, tend to subconsciously promote those who sound like them. Thus, they say, insisting on your natural, non-RP accent can be a career-damaging move. I get this. The pressure is real, and the stakes are high. My message is not one of blame for those who code-switch to survive, but a challenge to the system that forces that choice. We cannot keep cherry-picking from the prejudices of the past to suit our career aspirations. Academics should not have to present their research on AI or post-colonial theory in, as I often joke, “the accent of a 19th-century hereditary genius.” Dismantling the sonic straitjacket Accent bias is a deeply rooted cultural weed that will not disappear on its own. If universities are truly committed to representation, they must champion linguistic diversity with the same vigour they apply to racial or gender equity. Start with promotion criteria. With communication skills, make it explicit that clarity is valued above conformity. Conduct an accent audit. It needs to go beyond tokenism, so must include permanent chairs, not just one-off speakers. If every professor with a regional accent can be counted on one hand, that is not diversity; it is a deficit. Incorporate unconscious bias training that specifically addresses accent. Most academics have never been asked to examine why they instinctively trust a Southern Standard voice over a Scouse or Caribbean one. Let them sit with that question. Create enforceable policies. Accent-based discrimination should be treated as seriously as any other form of prejudice. If students complain they “couldn’t understand” a lecturer with a regional or foreign accent, the response should not be “fix your voice,” but “broaden your ear.” We must also actively reject corrosive labels like ‘coconut’ or ‘sell-out’ that are wielded against those who are trying to navigate an oppressive system. These slurs reveal a cruel double-bind: conform and you are accused of betrayal; resist and you are denied advancement. The labels make the problem personal – a matter of individual authenticity – when it is in fact structural. They redirect anger sideways, at each other rather than upward at the gatekeepers. This is not to excuse those who, once promoted, become enforcers of the same linguistic discipline. But the critique must name the system that produced them, not simply the individual who emerged from it. Instead of turning on each other, we must amplify and celebrate those who, where they can afford to, refuse to code-switch. True progress means creating a space where Stormzy’s cadence is valued as much as Rishi Sunak ‘s polished tones (the result of childhood elocution lessons). Yet, for all this, I remain sceptical about the willingness of academia’s managerial class to act. Complacency runs deep. The existing hierarchy has served them well. Too many would rather preserve the old order, with its familiar sonic cues of belonging, than dismantle a system that guarantees their own cultural capital. But their conformity and inertia come at a cost. They will drive talent away. The era of linguistic and class engineering must end. It is a tired, antiquated practice that betrays the very spirit of inquiry and innovation that universities claim to champion. It’s time for UK academia to shed its classist sonic straitjacket, to go beyond merely looking diverse, and to finally, truly, open its ears and listen to the voices it has silenced for centuries. Main image: bSides on Flickr This post is opinion-based and does not reflect the views of the London School of Economics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments and divisions. The post Open your ears: dismantling higher education’s sonic straitjacket first appeared on LSE Higher Education .

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