In my recent research on language attitudes in Algeria, I interviewed people about a rural, nomadic variety of Arabic. The specific setting was Algerian, but the patterns I found will be familiar to anyone who has ever been judged by the way they speak, whether in Newcastle, Belfast, Lagos or Lahore. Here are five lessons that, I believe, apply far beyond one country.

1. An accent can be loved and looked down on at the same time

Many of the people I spoke to described the rural variety as sweet, musical and authentic. Some said it sounded like a song. Yet the same people often described its speakers as uneducated, unskilled or unsuited to positions of authority.

Sociolinguists call this the difference between covert prestige and overt prestige. A stigmatised variety can be admired for warmth, honesty, heritage or beauty: the qualities we associate with friends and family. But overt prestige, the kind linked to status, competence and professional success, is reserved for the dominant variety, usually the one associated with cities, education and power.

This matters because praise in one domain does not protect people in another. Being told your accent is charming does not help if you are passed over for promotion because you do not sound like a manager.

2. “Professional” speech is a social invention

When people explained why rural speakers would not suit professional roles, they rarely pointed to any real communication problem. Instead, they relied on caricature. One participant imagined a rural speaker at a reception desk talking about sheep and the weather, and losing the company its customers.

Images like this are powerful precisely because they are not about language at all. They are about what we imagine a group of people to be like. “Sounding professional” usually means sounding like the people who already hold professional jobs. Research in the UK and the United States shows the same thing: speakers with non-standard or regional accents are judged less suitable for senior or customer-facing roles, even when what they say is identical.

3. Prestige often follows power, including colonial power

In my study, the prestige of a variety depended heavily on how much it borrowed from French, the former colonial language. French words signalled modernity and competence. Their absence signalled backwardness. Some participants even switched into French while criticising rural speakers, performing their own modernity in the very act of judging others.

The details differ from place to place, but the principle is widespread. The language or accent of those who historically held power, whether a colonial elite, an upper class or a capital city, tends to become the yardstick against which everyone else is measured. The result is that a way of speaking turns into a gatekeeping resource: something you need in order to get through certain doors, regardless of your actual ability.

4. Accent judgements can also be gender judgements

Participants often described the rural variety as rough and manly. They found it hard to imagine a woman speaking it, and some praised young male speakers as mature and responsible because of how they sounded. Urban speech, by contrast, was linked with refinement.

This is a reminder that accents carry layers of social meaning at once. The same feature can be read as a sign of class, region, modernity and gender. A woman who speaks a stigmatised variety may face a double penalty: judged as less professional and as less appropriately feminine.

5. Stigma creates a cycle of exclusion

Perhaps the most worrying finding was how directly participants mapped accents onto jobs. Speakers of urban varieties were imagined as doctors and administrators. Rural speakers were placed in manual work or assumed to be unemployed. Some of the people I interviewed were in a position to recruit staff.

This creates a cycle. A group is stereotyped as unskilled, so its members are excluded from skilled jobs. Their exclusion then seems to confirm the stereotype. Linguistic prejudice does not simply reflect inequality; it helps to reproduce it.

What can we do?

  • In recruitment: judge candidates on the content of what they say, not how they sound. Structured interviews with clear criteria leave less room for bias than vague ideas of “polish” or “fit”.
  • In education: teach that every accent and dialect is systematic and legitimate, and question the idea that only one way of speaking is academic or professional.
  • In the media: show speakers of stigmatised varieties as doctors, managers and experts, not only as figures of fun.
  • In policy: recognise linguistic diversity as a resource. But avoid romanticising stigmatised speakers as “authentic” people who belong to the past. Admiration that keeps people out of modern life is just another form of exclusion.

The question is not whether someone’s accent sounds beautiful or professional. It is why we ever assumed the two could not go together.