Inaugural Lecture of the News UK Professor of Language and Communication
Why accent matters – from social interaction to life outcomes
Professor Devyani Sharma will give her inaugural lecture as Professor of Language and Communication, endowed by News UK, on 12 February at 5pm at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. She will lecture on: "Why accent matters – from social interaction to life outcomes"
This is a public lecture and everyone is welcome. Tickets are free but registration is required.
Lecture abstract
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? I begin with the smallest social unit—the dyadic interaction—and then move outwards to intergenerational accent change and workplace perceptions. For each domain, I present sample findings that revise prevailing views and that draw on inter-disciplinary insights from cognition, network theory, and inferential reasoning. Taken together, the cases showcase the central role of subtle speech differences in organising human interaction. In closing, I comment on how these questions are being reshaped in the age of AI.
Biography
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 currently leading a project on variation and change in London English across ages and generations ( https://generationsoflondonenglish.org/). She co-led the only nationwide investigation of attitudes to accent and workplace bias in the UK ( accentbiasbritain.org). She was commissioned by the Sutton Trust to co-author a report on linguistic barriers to social mobility with national recommendations and she engages widely with media and external stakeholders.
