Table of Contents
Toggle1. What are We Reacting To?
If listeners react so quickly to accents, an important question follows:
What exactly are they reacting to?
From a linguistic perspective, the answer is simple: variation.
From a social perspective, however, the answer is more complex: hierarchy.
No accent is inherently superior to another. Every variety of a language follows systematic phonological patterns shaped by history, geography and social interaction. Yet in everyday life, accents are not treated equally.
Some are associated with professionalism, education and authority. Others are perceived as provincial, humorous or foreign. These patterns reveal the existence of accent hierarchies: social ranking systems that assign different levels of prestige to different ways of speaking.
What people often describe as a “neutral” or “standard” accent is rarely neutral at all. It is usually the accent associated with social power. As Pierre Bourdieu (1991) argues, certain ways of speaking come to be perceived as more legitimate not because they are linguistically superior, but because they are linked to social authority.
From a linguistic perspective, however, the concept of a “neutral” or “accent-free” speaker is a myth. Every speaker has an accent. Accent is simply the phonetic realization of a language shaped by experience, environment and linguistic history.
2. Accent and Intelligibility
Accent hierarchies are not only social, they also intersect with intelligibility.
Even among so-called “native speakers”, not all accents are equally easy to understand. Listeners may find certain regional or social varieties more difficult to process, particularly when they differ significantly from the listener’s own phonological system or prior exposure. Research in speech perception shows that understanding is strongly shaped by listening experience (e.g. Anne Cutler, 2012).
For additional-language speakers, this variability becomes even more salient. Research shows that some varieties of English are generally more intelligible than others, depending on factors such as speech rate, phonological features, and listener familiarity. Importantly, intelligibility is not fixed: it is shaped by experience. A speaker of German, for example, may find certain Northern European varieties of English easier to understand than others, while a speaker with a Romance-language background may perceive different varieties as more accessible. Work in English as a Lingua Franca highlights that mutual intelligibility depends on specific phonological features rather than native norms (Jenkins, 2000)
This means that what is often perceived as a “clear” or “good” accent is not universally defined. Instead, intelligibility emerges from the interaction between speaker and listener. Studies have consistently shown that accentedness and intelligibility are not the same (Munro & Derwing, 1995).
As a result, judgments about clarity frequently overlap with existing accent hierarchies: accents associated with prestige tend to be perceived as more intelligible, even when this perception is influenced as much by familiarity and expectation as by linguistic features themselves.
In many cases, listeners report that prestigious accents are “clearer” not because they are inherently more intelligible, but because they are more familiar, more widely represented in media, and more strongly associated with authority.
3. The Native Speaker Myth
A related myth persists in education and parenting: the belief that children should ideally learn a language only from a “native speaker.”
This assumption appears logical at first glance. Yet it rests on an oversimplified and often misleading view of language acquisition. As Dewaele, Bak and Ortega (2021) argue, the concept of the native speaker is far less stable and meaningful than commonly assumed. It reflects not only linguistic assumptions, but also social and ideological hierarchies that position some speakers as more legitimate than others.
Linguistic competence, however, does not depend on conformity to a single idealized model. Languages are dynamic systems shaped by variation, mobility and contact.
Expecting children to learn languages only from “perfect” native speakers is therefore both unrealistic and unnecessary. Children do not learn languages from idealized models. They learn them from people.
4. Multilingualism and Accent
Another common misconception is that “real bilinguals” or “real multilinguals” speak all their languages without any accent.
This idea is equally problematic.
Many multilingual speakers have accents in one or more of their languages, even when they are highly proficient. Accent is influenced by multiple factors, including exposure, environment, frequency of use and social context.
Research on second-language acquisition shows that pronunciation outcomes are influenced by multiple interacting factors, including exposure, use and social context, rather than by age alone.
Similarly, Bongaerts et al. (1997) showed that some highly proficient late learners were rated by native listeners as having pronunciation within the range of native speakers.
A comprehensive review by Piske, MacKay and Flege (2001) reinforces this point, concluding that there is no clear-cut age boundary that guarantees either native-like or foreign-accented pronunciation. Pronunciation outcomes emerge from the interaction of multiple variables, not from age alone.
In other words, age matters, but it is not destiny.
5. Rethinking Legitimacy
Understanding accent hierarchies helps explain why certain voices are perceived as more legitimate than others. It also reveals why many speakers begin to adjust their pronunciation in response to these expectations.
This raises an important question:
What happens when speakers start to adapt their voices in order to be accepted?
In the next article, I explore how and why this adaptation occurs, and what it means for identity and belonging.
Understanding this complexity helps dismantle unrealistic expectations about accent and multilingualism. Rather than asking whether someone sounds like an imagined “native speaker”, we might ask a more meaningful question:
Does communication succeed, or are we still measuring voices against hierarchies that have little to do with understanding?
Selected Readings
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Harvard University Press.
Cutler, A. (2012). Native Listening: Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words. MIT Press.
Dewaele, J.-M., Bak, T. H., & Ortega, L. (2021). Why the mythical “native speaker” has mud on its face. In N. Slavkov, S. Melo-Pfeifer, & N. Kerschhofer-Puhalo (Eds.), The changing face of the “native speaker”: Perspectives from multilingualism and globalization. De Gruyter, 25–46.
Bongaerts, T., van Summeren, C., Planken, B., & Schils, E. (1997).
Age and ultimate attainment in the pronunciation of a foreign language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(4), 447–465.
Cruttenden, A. (2014). Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (8th ed.). Routledge.
Jenkins, J. (2000). The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford University Press.
Levis, J. (2005). Changing contexts and shifting paradigms in pronunciation teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 39(3), 369–377.
Murray J. Munro & Tracey M. Derwing (1995). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 45(1), 73–97.
Piske, T., MacKay, I. R. A., & Flege, J. E. (2001). Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: A review. Journal of Phonetics, 29(2), 191–215.
About British accents, I invite you to watch the video by Paul from LangFocus:
