'Some Accents Sound Guiltier Than Others'

Linguist Dan Clayton looks at recent research on accent bias in the justice system and the media, and what it reveals about changing attitudes

Photo: Andrey Kuzmin/Alamy

It probably comes as no great shock to be told that biases against certain regional accents in the UK are fairly entrenched in a familiar hierarchy, with Received Pronunciation (RP) at the top and varieties such as Scouse and Brummie towards the bottom. And in terms of status, that is generally what the research shows, across about fifty years of accent studies from the late 1960s into the 2020s. It just seems to be something we in the UK accept as a fact of life: there is a rich variety of different accents and dialects but also a kind of ‘natural’ order to it.

In fact, even the terms we use – ‘regional’ and ‘received’ – seem to embed this order. Few question why accents like Bristolian or Cumbrian get slapped with the label ‘regional’ when accents from the south east (a region, surely?) generally don’t attract such a description; meanwhile, the ‘received’ of RP is very much the ‘received’ of ‘received wisdom’ – accepted, unchallenged, normal.

Stories about language variety generate column inches and clicks, and it is hard to avoid surveys revealing “Britain’s sexiest accent” (Essex apparently, if you take the word of renowned pollsters and linguistic experts, the…err… Big 7 travel company) or tales of actors nailing or butchering certain accents in their films. But attitudes to accents go much deeper than many of these throwaway stories suggest and the impact of accent discrimination goes beyond broad concerns about social justice and into justice justice, ie: the legal system itself.

---

Accent in the Justice System

In the words of University of Cambridge linguist Alice Paver, “Listeners think some accents sound guiltier than others and we should all be concerned about that”. And she should know, because Paver is one of four academics involved in a 2025 paper, Stereotyped accent judgements in forensic contexts which looked at just how little time it took to make a judgement about whether a speaker with a certain accent would be likely to return your lost wallet, physically assault someone, or touch someone sexually without consent.

In this study, 30-second clips of voices with different accents were played to participants, who were then asked to rate them for social traits such as confidence, honesty, kindness and intelligence, and specific behaviours connected to crime and morality. Most of the results chimed with existing research: those with accents perceived as being high status were judged as being less likely to commit most crimes and those with lower status accents were seen as being more likely to commit crime.