Why accent matters – from social interaction to life outcomes

This event is organised by the Faculty of English and is taking place at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.

Join us for Professor Devyani Sharma’s inaugural lecture as News UK Professor of Language and Communication on: "Why accent matters – from social interaction to life outcomes". 

Spoken interaction is the foundation of human activity. One aspect of speech—accent, and more broadly our unique speech style—can signal region, social class, ethnicity, and more. This lecture reviews a body of research that moves beyond these familiar group-level associations. What work does speech style do in real time as people interact? And how does it shape outcomes at larger scales of social structure? 

Devyani Sharma FBA is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford. Her research examines how new accents and dialects develop, migration and inter-ethnic contact, generational change in language and social systems, speech style, attitudes, and bilingualism. She is the author of From Deficit to Dialect: The Evolution of English in India and Singapore, and her co-edited works include Research Methods in Linguistics, The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, English in the Indian Diaspora.

She is leading a project on variation and change in London English across ages and generations.  She co-led the only nationwide investigation of attitudes to accent and workplace bias in the UK.