When I discovered research on the Birmingham accent...

To be honest, I’ve never really thought about the accents people have when they speak. I can never really distinguish one from another anyway, so really they all blend into one to me! When I did my research on people’s perceptions of the Birmingham or ‘Brummie’ accent, I was shocked to find so many different prejudices and judgments on just the way a persons voice sounds. Negative is a popular phrase that pops in to mind when considering my research; each new idea or survey I found seemed to have a different bad approach to the accent.

The Birmingham accent makes people sound less clever apparently, according to Bath Spa Uni. Tell me this, how exactly can a persons accent give any indication about their intelligence? It can’t, that’s how. The Birmingham accent is the least ‘cool’. Well what exactly is ‘cool’? Fair enough ‘Coolbrands’ have surveyed 2,000 people, but is using the term ‘cool’ really an effective word? However at least the Brummies have one lot of research to be proud of, they're the funniest when telling a joke, says the 

University of Aberdeen, I suppose that's a consolation prize.

If people are narrow minded enough to join in with this labelling frenzy and judge people by their accent then yes, I’m sure people with a Birmingham accent will be disadvantaged when it comes to job interviews, meetings ect. Which I suppose is only their loss as they could be dismissing extremely able people with huge potentials on the grounds that their accent says something negative about their person, when it doesn’t.

In my opinion, accents don’t matter. Accents represent where you come from, your surroundings and the people around you, not your intelligence or capability! It’s what’s in the inside that counts. :):)