• Question: Sir Damien , why do people who come from a posh area talk in a posh accent? or make a snoting noise.

    Asked by oliviabu007 to Damien on 18 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Yer wouldn’t call me Sir if yer’d heard the way I talk, innit?

      Hi @oliviabu007!

      Most often, people talk like the people they talk to – in a way, that’s why the whole of what I do is possible. (Doing linguistics depends on the fact that language is usually regular and predictable, and changes along lines that are to do with age, social class, geography, or something else about society.)

      So that’s why people who come from a posh area talk with a posh accent – because, if they come from a posh area, they probably mostly talk to posh people, and so they end up talking like them, even if they didn’t before. The same sort of thing happened to me when I was in America – I’m from London and went there with a London accent, but I came back talking a bit more like an American. (Still British, but not quite as British as before…)

      Do you know a posh area near where you live? Do the people there speak very differently from you?

Comments