Bronwyn's results

I asked a variety of participants; one from the north of England, three from the Midlands and one from near London.

1. Varied response to this question, but 3/5 agreed that the MIC accent was more approachable than the GS one. One of the other participants disagreed and another neither agreed nor disagreed.

participant	1	2	3	4	5
Scale of 1 to 5 1- strongly disagree 5-strongly agree	4	3	5	4	2

The results are very close, but they do show that the majority of people think that the MIC accent is more approachable that the GS one. Although I was surprised that one of the participants disagreed, and one neither agreed nor disagreed. This could show that not everyone thinks that the approachability of a person is based on their accent.

2. One participant strongly disagreed that the GS accent was attractive, 2 disagreed that it was attractive, and another 2 neither agreed nor disagreed.

Participant	1	2	3	4	5
Scale of 1 to 5 1- strongly disagree 5-strongly agree	3	2	1	2	3

Again, with 3/5 people disagreed with the statement that the accent was attractive, but another 2 neither agreeing nor disagreeing, this could show that like approachability, attractiveness is not always rated on accent, and that not everyone thinks that accents can be attractive or unattractive.

3. One participant strongly agreed with the statement in question 3 and 1 strongly disagreed. 2 others agreed and 1 other disagreed.

Participant	1	2	3	4	5
Scale of 1 to 5 1- strongly disagree 5-strongly agree	2	4	5	4	1

There seems to be a pattern in my results that there will always be an almost balance on agreement and disagreement of the judgement of the GS and MIC accents. But it remains once again that the majority agreed that you could tell which social class the characters belonged to due to their accent.

4.

Words	Participant 1	Participant 2	Participant 3	Participant 4	Participant 5	Total
Talk		Yes	Yes		yes	3
Newspaper	yes	Yes		Yes		3
Captain		Yes				1
Watertight		Yes	Yes		Yes	3
Cake	yes	Yes		Yes	Yes	4
Awkward		Yes	Yes		Yes	3
Granted	yes	Yes		Yes		3
Play		Yes			Yes	2
Royal		Yes		Yes	yes	3
Dance	yes	yes	yes	yes		4

5.

Didn’t evoke class distinctions	Working class northerners-GS Upper class Londoners	Accents exaggerated/encourage viewers to see the characters as conforming to stereotypes
1	4	2

Interestingly, one participant didn’t think their accents reflected their social background, as they were used in different contexts and situations of men with different obsessions (GS-self image, dating, MIC-status and possessions). However, 80% of the participants thought that the accents did reflect social background, but only half of those participants said that this was emphasized to encourage the viewers to assume the characters’ social statuses.

-By looking at my results I think the majority of people may judge the accent in the programs, but 2 of my participants have noted that they seem to be exaggerated in order to influence the audience, and thus push them to make judgements about these accents.