Your accent can define social role

Dubai: Do you judge people on how well they speak? Does it matter if someone talks like royalty or sounds like they had more modest origins?

According to a survey just out, accents are major factors behind someone's success or failure in the workplace.

The study, carried out in the United Kingdom, found that a mammoth two thirds of workers deliberately changed their accent when doing business, with younger staff members the most likely to manipulate the way they spoke.

More than half of the 1,300 business professionals canvassed for their views by telecommunications firm NTL said accents that suggested the person came from London or the south-east of England were valued in the workplace, particularly for those employed in finance.

In the UK, an accent is mainly useful for telling someone's class and place of origin within the country.

Melting pot

Things could be different here in the UAE, with its melting pot of cultures. Accents are more likely to be used by the listener to decide not just where in the world a person comes from, but also how well educated they are and even where they were educated.

According to Rasha Al Najjar, business development and marketing manager for Protraining, a company that offers services such as etiquette tuition for employees, said the importance of accent depended upon what field someone was working in.

English accents could be important, she said, in many types of job, but for more specialised work the way you spoke took second fiddle to being able to communicate fluently using the correct terminology.

"An English accent makes a difference but it's not a must. Some people have to talk about what they're doing in a technical way.

"Then the accent doesn't make a difference as long as they are speaking in good, structured English," she said.

Al Najjar insists that in "cosmopolitan" Dubai the extent to which your accent indicates which part of the world you come from should matter little but nevertheless sometimes was important.

"Some people have ideas about people who come from particular places. They might trust or not trust this nation it comes from our own experiences and whether we have had a bad experience with someone from this country. We might have met some good people or some bad people from this country.

"If something bad has happened, sometimes if we meet someone else from that same country, we won't like them. Sometimes like this language and accent can make a difference," she said.

'Lot of difference'

Sarah Salera, a Filipina who has worked as a personnel manager in Dubai, said certain accents had a value on them.

"If someone has a western accent, they give the impression that their mentality is more western as well. It makes a lot of difference. It can show people that you are educated. I think this is wrong, but that's what happens," she said.

Similarly, psychiatrist Dr Naresh Dhar said for people working in many fields in Dubai competence in English was important.

Like Salera, he too had reservations about whether this was the right way to judge people

"English is important because of globalisation. Having a good command of the language is considered important but it doesn't equate with your IQ or intellect," said Dhar, head of department and specialist psychiatrist at Prime Medical Centre, Jumeirah.

He added that an accent was not just important due to its influence on how a person is perceived and treated, but also because it affected how a person saw themselves.

"If they have achieved command of a language and have a good accent, that helps their ego and confidence," he said.