Accent snobbery boosts demand for elocution lessons

“I don’t like being a Band Aid on a class system that isn’t working, but that’s what I am,” says Matt Pocock. Pocock is a voice coach based in London, and while many of his clients are non-native English speakers who want to be more easily understood, others, such as a doctor at Great Ormond Street Hospital with a Cockney accent, were born in this country and dislike the assumptions made about them based on how they sound.

Pocock works with up to 20 clients a week, creates bespoke sessions for corporate clients and runs some open courses for the public. Business is thriving: at this time of year, he says, bookings are “massively up”. Many voice coaches find demand peaks each Autumn and New Year. “I think September and January are times of the year where people are looking to improve themselves,” suggests Felicity Goodman, a Manchester-based voice coach.

The Tutor Pages, an online tutor business directory, saw enquiries for elocution lessons increase by almost a quarter (23.5%) in the three months following the EU referendum compared to the same period in 2015. Henry Fagg, founder of The Tutor Pages, says post-referendum there were enquiries from EU nationals (from outside the UK) who wanted their accent to blend in more easily.

Kevin Chapman, director of Rada in Business, a commercial arm of Rada (the Royal Academy for Dramatic Art), says there has been a significant uptick in customer interest in voice coaching. Rada in Business has seen a 300% to 400% increase in customers booking one-to-one voice training sessions in the past year.

A desire to phase out a regional accent is common among people who book elocution lessons, say coaches. But, as sessions progress, what typically emerges is that other aspects of clients’ speaking skills actually bother them more. “That could be bad posture, tension, or anxiety when doing presentations,” Goodman says.

Listening back to a recording of her Skype session with a client was the prompt for Jane Hand, a life coach from Altrincham, to book elocution lessons. “I was horrified,” she says in a soft, Lancashire brogue. Hand didn’t feel that her speech was as clear or attractive as she wished to be. From Wigan originally, Hand says that “softening” her accent was a concern but ultimately her aim is to be able to communicate more clearly with clients from all over the world, and build rapport quickly.

She’s done four sessions so far, exploring how to breathe, how to stand, and how to “own the room” in a presentation. She already feels that her confidence has grown so much that instead of her stomach churning at the prospect of public speaking, she positively “wants to speak”.

Goodman’s clients range from teachers to lawyers to tradespeople setting up a business. “It’s amazing to me that people have been told when they’ve been for interviews that their accent wasn’t right for the job,” Goodman says. “But I think that employers might be using ‘accent’ as shorthand, when what they mean is vocabulary, or diction.”

However, bias against particular accents can be very real, says Paul Russell, workplace psychologist and director of Luxury Academy London. His business offers soft skills training for people working in the luxury market, in which international customers can find regional accents tough to understand. Russell says: “Like it or not, people’s impressions of you are based on your accent. Do you think you would take me seriously as a luxury expert if I spoke with a broad Essex accent? It’s snobbishness, but unfortunately, it’s there.”

Changing the way you speak, however, doesn’t come cheap. Tuition ranges between £20 and £40 an hour, and 10 sessions is a standard kick-off package. At the Birmingham School of Elocution, Robin Wooldridge doesn’t advertise because sessions tend to be booked up: people find him online – investment in a good website and search engine optimisation seems to work for elocution teachers.

Wooldridge’s prices ranges from £25 to £35 per hour, and are pegged to local music teachers’ rates. He typically sees 40 to 50 clients a month. Goodman, meanwhile, says she might see two a week, or she might see 10, so her income can fluctuate considerably.

So why are people shelling out? Wooldridge explains that many of his clients, including business people and academics, want to avoid people making assumptions about them. He says. “It’s what people read into [an accent]. Despite everything you hear about embracing diversity, scratch the surface and that isn’t really there. And it’s enough to drive people here.”

Wooldridge points out that the Lamda (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art) elocution exam regulations state that regional accents are perfectly acceptable. However he adds: “Parents who send their children [ to the Birmingham School of Elocution], they’re already at private or grammar school and the one thing they don’t want is their child to have a strong Birmingham accent.”

Wooldridge’s other group of clients are non-native English-speaking medical professionals, their task goes beyond vowel sounds and consonants. “Unless you address modulation [changing the pitch, tone or volume], you won’t get the English language pattern, and it won’t sound right,” says Wooldridge.

Born in Brazil, lawyer Patricia Cassidy says that 15 sessions of voice coaching have made a huge difference to her both personally and professionally. She found it “a bit embarrassing” that after 16 years in the UK, her accent was still sometimes a barrier to being understood. Cassidy’s noticed that people aren’t asking her to repeat words and phrases nearly so often now. “If I was living in America, I think I’d sound more American than I do British,” she observes. “I think the British accent is more difficult.”

Voice coaches point out that accent tends to be inextricably wrapped up in identity, so total transformation may have longer-lasting implications on your sense of self and your relationships with family and friends.

Interestingly, notes Russell, some people now try to “de-posh” their voices. Regional accents, such as the Geordie accent, he says, are also “more acceptable” now in professional contexts than they would have been just a decade ago. So, what we like in voices, and the meaning and context we ascribe to accents, appears to alter over time.

It seems that people’s consciousness of how they sound – bolstered by the assumptions made about accents and the enduring British class system – means many voice coaches will have full diaries for years to come. It’s a job that needs sensitivity as well as technical expertise. Russell says: “There’s something very vulnerable about saying ‘I need you to teach me to speak in a different way’. Actually, it’s incredibly brave.”

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