The impact of an accent on charisma/persuasion
Five years ago, I moved from the southeast US to the northwest. I took my southern accent with me, and, as far as I know, it's been fine. I've been able to get work, make friends, and mostly function as normal.
My accent is light. It doesn't sound southern to other southerners, but it does sound southern anywhere else in the US. People who have commented on it say they like it (but what else would you say, I guess š ).
But I'm about to take on something that will require me to be persuasive. I'm wondering what Tildes thinks: will my accent diminish my ability to be persuasive? Should I try to train my accent out and develop a more neutral accent?
I find myself torn. On the one hand, a southern accent could immediately call to mind the stereotypes of the south: stubborn people without much education. Maybe it makes sense to let that go and start on a more level playing field. On the other hand, my time growing up in the south is part of my history. It makes me unique and maybe the upset expectations (if someone hears me and expects me to embody those stereotypes I mentioned before) could make me more memorable.
I generally don't like the idea of filing the rough edges off things, especially when those things are people, but at the same time, I have goals I want to achieve and I'm willing to do what it takes to reach them. So, what do you think?
Edit: I appreciate all the comments so far! For a little additional context, I want to be active in local politics. Not trying to run for office or anything. Not sure exactly where I'll be taking that on yet, but it won't be in the south.
Intentionally losing an accent could have a negative psychological effect on you. To me that would feel like I'm negating myself in order to conform. I imagine this would be detrimental to my confidence, and, as a consequence, my persuasiveness.
I'm from the Midlands in the UK our accent isn't too strong, but family is Irish and my other half is an Aussie... My accent is all over the shop.
In business I find myself having to really scale back the bits of my accent so others don't have a hard time. I've had bad attitude in companies that do have passive-aggressive attitudes towards those who don't have the usual "queen's English" or Southern accent.
I neutralised it for a time and absolutely hated it. Went right back to not faking that and I feel a tonne better for it.
No one should have to hide their background to fit in. It sucks on your mental health.
I worked in Cambridge, UK for a while (not a native English speaker). I suppressed my accent to the point where people assumed I was born in the UK, due to incredibly passive-aggressive attitudes of people I worked with. God forbid I used an Americanism or I would never hear the end of it. And I also got a bunch of shit from people in more casual settings for speaking 'the queen's English', so there was really no way to win. But in the workplace, it definitely gave me an advantage - I was taken more seriously, and was seen as 'barely foreign' and 'one of the good ones'. (Lovely. /s)
Joke's on them though, I moved away six years ago and learned two more languages. My accent is all over the place now.
Yeah, you've encountered the same absolute nonsense I do on the regular. I'm sorry bud.
My wife and I are now starting to look overseas for our future. We love the UK, but it's people (my people?) can just be such arseholes about everything. If it isn't "the pub", then they often do not care.
Probably, depending on the audience. A stereotypically southern accent in the US more and more is emblematic of an urban/rural divide - if you speak to a young person in Nashville, Atlanta, or any of the other sunbelt cities with exponential growth in the recent years, you won't hear much of an accent at all.
If you're persuading people who adhere more to a rural background, a "standard" American accent may be a disadvantage, and vice versa. That being said, it's likely more often that you are talking to other urbanites.
I don't think it's by any mean an unsurmountable hurdle, but it does exist, like it or not. As to whether or not you want to remove your accent, that's up to you, in the end. No one can know what the balance between being true to yourself and accomplishing your goals is best your yourself other than yourself. But accent prejudice exists, for sure.
And politicians who sound like Foghorn Leghorn are stereotyped as untrustworthy.
On the other hand, I would follow Benoit Blanc to the ends of the earth.
Sure it isn't just Craig?
How are you judging your accent? Are you making audio recordings and playing them back to yourself, and saving them to see your progress over time? It's often very difficult to judge which parts of your speech are considered problematic, or charming, to an outsider.
As you yourself noted, accent differences are perceived very differently from person to person.
I would not place too much effort on changing your accent. The message, and the vocabulary, matters often much more than the accent, especially inside the USA. This story would be different if you were trying to do this between foreign countries who have much stronger negative sentiments between each other.
If you have not seriously considered sales training, you should consider it. Persuasion is a nuanced skill with a lot of things beyond the verbal delivery of a message. It's timing, knowing your audience, gauging the receptiveness of your audience over time (days, weeks or months even!). Unless you are a trained actor, the time you put into mastering the accent is going to be wasted compared to the efforts you put into the other tasks.
Persuasive to who?
Someone who needs to be persuasive to strangers (like a salesman going door to door) might have a problem... but I would say this is a special case. I am from Eastern Europe and I am told that east-European accent has negative connotations in Western Europe. I never encountered it even though I have accumulated years of living in the UK (before Brexit) or Spain - I think it is because I do not need to be persuasive to strangers and those who know you quickly figure out who you are; if you are open-minded and smart, you will be perceived as such and this perception will be much stronger than your accent.
At least this is my experience. I know people who complain that their accent is causing them problems, but I think that it is often attribution error - some people encounter common assholes but they interpret their behavior as some kind of accent-based discrimination instead of just common asholeness.
BTW, beware of confirmation bias - if you expect problems caused by your accent, you will get them. It might be just perception, or it might be that you change your behavior slightly and others will react to that subconsciously.
I do not think that accents are something that play a major role in career progression anymore, and in some careers, having accents that differ from the local one are the norm. Due to remote working taking a huge foothold, you can have teams that are composed of people in vastly different timezones, with radically different accents, and I am yet to see anyone be judged for it. In your case, since you mentioned local politics, having an accent might even be an advantage, as locals wouldn't take you up as "foreign".
If someone takes a disliking to you because of your accent, it is most often not your accent, but rather the fact that particular person dislikes people with a certain background, and they're trying to rationalise it. It is not worth it trying to suppress your accent unless it is causing you massive communication issues.
There is no such thing a neutral accent; I wouldn't have a "neutral" accent in Louisiana or Glasgow, it would only be neutral to inhabitants of where I currently live. If you were to develop a "Californian" accent or something similar, you'd find it is not "neutral" in a significant part of the world.
OP mentioned being in the Northwest now, so it would differ from the people there. However, I'd like to think that accent isn't going to be too much of a distraction from a good point made well. For charisma/persuasion specifically, I think being articulate and projecting confidence (whether real or faked) are far more important factors.
There is no completely neutral accent, but there is a continuum of accents in the US and Canada that don't immediately give away where you were raised.
It's really going to depend on the exact accent and probably the industry as well. There's characters like Atticus Finch or the Engineer from TF2 who have a southern drawl but sound sophisticated, vs sounding like an extra from Deliverence.
I think as long as you're understable and not using any unknown slang, you're probably fine around most people.
You can't please everyone. Instead of trying to get rid of your accent (and feeling inauthentic), maybe you can try playing into its strengths. Some people associate "Southern" with "hospitality"!
This comment is so odd to me.
Own your accent... Be real... Own it.
If you purposely change yourself to be more persuasive, that sounds super fake.
Is this common behavior? Maybe I just don't give a fuck what people think, or maybe it is a generational thing. But isn't it better to be authentic?
I guess the question is. Why are you trying to be persuasive? What's the end goal. And is that goal worth being fake in the process?
There is a stereotype in the U.S. that the southern accent automatically indicates low intelligence and strongly conservative views. Some people are very dismissive the second they hear that accent come out of someoneās mouth.
If the people you're trying to impress are also the same people that are easily dismissive because of an accent. That world sounds exhausting and fake.
I work with people all over the country. What you say is so much more important than what accent you say it with as long as it's legible.
I could understand an unintelligible accent being a hindrance. But shifting your speech depending on the situation seems unauthentic.
Do you speak to your boss the same way you speak to your kids?
Code-switching is something we all do. There's nothing wrong with it and it's not (necessarily) inauthentic. I think you're reacting to the idea of something more like "putting on airs," but wouldn't another way to look at that be "putting your best foot forward?"
I would still be my authentic self when speaking to my boss vs my kids though. The changes in the two scenarios are unconscious, not conscious.
The question posted was about being persuasive by changing your accent. I think it's slimy and fake to change your accent to get what you want.
I looked up "putting in airs". I don't think OP wants to be better than anyone, OP just more self centered.
I get where you're coming from, but is it slimy and fake to get braces for cosmetic reasons? To get a hair transplant? To dress nicely instead of poorly?
To take a Toastmasters course to learn how to speak more eloquently?
For a young immigrant to try to master the American accent?
Not trying to play gotcha, but I'd be very interested to hear what makes the one different from the other, if you still feel that way.
You have fair points, and perhaps I am being too critical.
You are correct, changing yourself or altering the way you look is similar to changing your accent. For some reason it just seems super strange and more extreme to me.
From OPs post, I believe their intent is not genuine, but one that is calculating. Which is why I responded the way I did.
If you believe one group of people is better than another group of people for something they can't help (accent, height, skin color, etc) and you alter yourself to be part of that group.... Ugh. Biases suck and reinforcing those biases to fit in a certain group is the worst type of person.
Getting braces to look better and improve yourself.... great. Getting braces to be part of a group that believes crooked teeth people are less than... lame.
That's totally fair! Well said.
I would prefer to be authentic, but I also have important things I'd like to accomplish and I recognize that pure authenticity on every conceivable metric is not always the way to get there. If given the choice between the two ā speaking in my genuine accent or achieving my other goals ā I'll take the latter. Put another way, if my choices are to be the guy who never gave an inch for nobody (Since I'm from the south, I have license to abuse the double negative. š) or the guy who made a differenceā¦ again, I'll take the latter. My goal with this post was just to take people's temperature about whether or not they think I need to make that choice.
Your definition of authenticity feels rigid and maybe even arbitrary. I'm not clear on the difference in your examples. How does getting braces "improve yourself" aside from greater social acceptance? Why does "looking better" get a pass while belonging to a group (albeit an apparently superficial one) does not? Looking better to who and by what measure, and why does looking better matter if not to in some way be better accepted? If that's why it matters, how is that different from your other example? It's not clear to me that one is better than the other or even that they are different at all. I guess there are probably people who get braces for health reasons, but I assume most of them are getting them to look better to other people. The reason they care about this is so they will be more accepted (popular, attractiveā¦ whatever euphemism you want to use for "accepted").
The other consideration here that I didn't really consider when writing this is that, sure, I speak with a southern accent, but I don't have pride around speaking with a southern accent. It's just that I grew up in the south and it happens to be the way I speak. What I am proud of are my principles, so, even though changing the accent would be hard, I'd do it if I thought it would help me realize those principles more fully. Yes, it would feel slightly undignified to have to change it just because in someone else's mind southern accent = uneducated, but that reflects more on them than it does on me.
I believe the importance we give our accent is different. I view accent as a core part of our being, one that changes throughout our life based on surrounding and experiences.
An accent is a unconscious part of ourselves. To change your accent purposefully, you always have to be on. I equate it to someone who is being fake.
Changing your teeth with braces is passive, no thought needed. Changing your accent is active, you need to always be on.
An example would be if you faked being deaf or blind to realize your principles more fully... It's just kinda slimy. You were born this way, own it.
Code switching is not inauthentic, it's just changing how you talk to fit better with the current situation. We don't talk exactly the same when holding a conference for co-workers compared to how we shoot the shit with friends.
For minorities around the world, some of their code switches also include switching to a more standardized dialect/accent. That's not to say they don't code switch within their own language/dialect too. They'll talk differently to an elder vs their mates too. But for them, "mainstreaming" their speach is often a given when they want to be taken seriously by the majority group.
Edit, for a lot of us, how we talk and behave around different people is absolutely not entirely subconcious.
Yeah, something is over my head here. Perhaps code switching is more nuanced than what I am imagining.
All people speak differently in certain situations. For example, I am very polite with strangers more so than with good friends. Is this code switching?
I have never known someone to change their accent other than to try and be understood better.... Is that code switching?
Do people talk with a British accent with friends then change to an Australian accent with strangers? That seems silly, as does changing your southern accent "to be more persuasive".
Yes.
As someone that uses several languages myself, I can switch language without switching code. I can be as casual with friends in my native language as I am in English for example.
Often folks will equate language switching, language mixing (multilingual people often use words from several common languages with other multilingual people) and dialect switching with code switching because it is so easy to notice. The reason they switch like that is usually more to do with formal/informal situations though, and the situation decides the way they talk, not the other way around.
But it isn't the switching of how you say things that matter, per se. It's more the reason for switching. For a lot of people, dialects and languages are tied to what situations they are in, but it isn't exclusively about language. But if you are in a situation where you switch your speach to be better understood, it's likely also not an entirely casuaol situation to begin with. Thus the link between changing accent and type of situation.
That is my understanding of it. It seems to have been expanded from when it was seen purely as a language switch in people that speak multiple languages.
Code-switching is real and very common. Iām most familiar with it in the context of BIPOC speakers adopting a neutral, āstandardā dialect in professional settings, and AAVE outside of work. Because of how closely itās tied with racial biases itās still somewhat taboo to speak frankly about. But I think this isnāt so different from what OP is asking about, and itās a legitimate question.
Fair enough. I read the article you linked. I liked this excerpt.
"My advice is to be strategic. Understand the culture of the organizations you move within, think about your values and make decisions that align with them. Donāt feel guilty about code-switching: It is not your responsibility to bear the burden of facing a dilemma that you have not created"
In my head it boils down to what options someone has.
If you don't have many options and are part of a shitty organization that values being fake and is super judgy, then yes, adapt and change your accent, clothes, whatever, and make some money.
But if you do have options then I stand by my previous statement.
For ignorant Euro people like me that are too lazy to Google (feel free to tag as noise):
Black, Indigenous, (and) People of Color (I knew of this, especially after 2020)
African-American Vernacular English (this was new to me).
Iām from Alabama. When I was 18 I moved to Denver for a girl and lived there for two years. Not gonna go into detail there, but I found that I naturally suppressed the Southern accent.
It would only come out when I was excited or angry.
I never put effort into changing my accent. I would just sort of āadoptā the accent of the people around me. On the rare occasion I bumped into another southerner, Iād lean back into my natural accent again.
Now when I moved back, people would tell me I had a āneutralā accent and I didnāt sound like I was from somewhere in particular.
Just my experience and I hope it can be helpful to you.
My grandfather was born outside of Atlanta. When he moved to the DC area, he ended up suppressing his Southern accent, and when I knew him, it only ever came out when he was excited or angry. To me it was very sad that he felt the need to speak differently to get ahead. Iām now living in South Carolina, and Iām trying to pick up an accent, in a weird way to recoup what he lost.
OP, I would encourage you to keep you accent, and speak it with pride! Blow folks away by being an expert in your field, and use their preconceptions against them.
Know your audience. If it matters to the people you're trying to win over, then absolutely 100% code switch.
People in the minority change their names, accent, way they dress and what they eat all the time. Do I wish it was different,? Yes. But we're not there yet
Get elected, get things done, then slip back into your accent if you feel like being cultural warrior for your accent.
For me I'm fighting too many fronts already, these days I just try to do easy things to survive if it doesn't come in conflict with good moral living.
I don't think 5e has any set rules on accent modifying charisma/persuasion checks. But a good dm would let you roll with advantage. š
Not that you have to, but just think how you'd be yet another example of breaking those stereotypes for us southern folk in the life experiences of judgemental people, which just makes it harder for them to justify their hatred of people based on where they're from.