How are different English accents evaluated by speakers? How do speakers see/judge different English accents?
The so-called unaccented English, the one that people on the BBC used to have is dignified by the term Received Pronunciation. What separates it from other accents is that it is not associated with any particular place. It is associated with the social class that sends its children away to mix with other children of parents who can afford to send them, at private boarding schools, called, with typical obfuscation, public schools. If you think that public schools are for the public you clearly don’t belong. This means that possession of an accent identifiable with a geographical region in England is the mark of a member of the lower class. Lots of people with such accents make successes of their lives, and provided that they remain living in the locality in which they acquired their accent nobody thinks the worse of them; but if they travel, or if they mix with the speakers of RP, they belong to the group of people who are _all right really_, not people who are all right. Of course all
Glad you edited your question. All the different English accents are steeped in history, and over the years most have acquired stereotypical characteristics attached to them. This concept has been used by advertisers for many years now – for instance, a north-east (Geordie) accent suggests honesty and integrity, with a certain ‘down-to-earth’ quality, so it’s used to promote basic products like bread. By the same token, you will never hear a Liverpool (Scouse) accent in a national ad because it is perceived to suggest dishonesty. Likewise, anyone with a West Midlands accent is perceived to be not very clever, while those with a ‘Home Counties’ accent are thought to be rather ‘posh’ and upper class. There are many more examples of this, and I would expect the same to be true of most languages that have regional variations. Hope this helps.
