Aims

To find out views and opinions of various accents and languages across the British Isles.

Methodology

In an online poll conducted by the BBC, 5000 participants were asked to rank the voices of celebrities in terms of the appeal and pleasantry of their accents.

Findings

Sean Connery consistently proved the most popular with his Edinburgh accent for the majority of participants. Following Connery was the newsreader Sir Trevor McDonald due to his authoritative RP accent. Also proving popular was the BBC Radio 2 newsreader Moira Stewart and Pierce Brosnan. The results from participants also showed a strong favour and preference for accents relatively similar to their own; English participants rated Hugh Grant's RP accent highly, while Scottish participants showed a strong favour for Ewan McGregor's Scottish accent. The trend continued with participants voting highly for accents of celebrities from their respective countries. This is supported further by the results of Ian Paisley's Northern Irish accent, which was declared the least pleasant in all countries of the British Isles apart from his home country of Northern Ireland.

Conclusions

It is possible to conclude from the data that their is a strong favourability to accents from a person's home country, and a possible dislike for accents which are not local. However, the fact that Sean Connery's Edinburgh accent proved most popular could imply some variation. Also, RP accents from Moira Stewart and Trevor McDonald prove the most popular as well as certain Scottish regional accents from Connery and Ewan McGregor.

Evaluation

The results of the research may not be most valid as there is a possibility that participants voted celebrities on their character or personal appeal rather than their accents, which could explain why actors and newsreaders whom participants are exposed to frequently proved the most favourable. Validity can also be brought into question through the sample used by the BBC. The size of the sample may not be proportional to the population of each country, therefore possibly making accents of celebrities of a certain nationality more poplar than others due to a biased sample. There are other factors such as social class and cultural background which may cause a bias or affect the data.