Persuasiveness and Accent-Message Incompatibility

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in order to investigate the effect of a speaker's accent upon listeners' responses to a communication. Speeches in favour of and against the Industrial Relations Act 1971 were recorded by one speaker using (a) RP (received pronunciation) and (b) a regional accent. Each of four groups of predominantly RP-speaking subjects heard one of the four accent-message combinations. The version which was most effective in influencing subjects' opinions was the RP-accented speech against the Act. This result is discussed in terms of compatibility between message-content and speaker's accent, listeners' identification with the speaker and the discrepancy between the listeners' original attitudes and that advocated by the speaker.

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