Does you accent and dialect really matter?

It is very often that people will change their accent or dialect when they talk, whether it be to fit in or to stand out.

Travelling has become a more frequent thing to do, this increase has meant that people with different dialects mix. The mix of different dialects allows people to pick up words which they would not normally use. The more people the more language is swapping and people are using dialect from other regions, this is causing dialect levelling, the swapping of dialects could create dialects to become more similar. We are influenced in many different ways to use other regional dialects and accents. These influences come from books, TV, music, films, etc... This creates a wider range of accents and dialects mixing because these different media's do not require you to leave your region or even house. You get the experience of hearing multiple dialects within TV shows or music. 

How people would like to be perceived has a big effect on how they talk. People are more likely to converge their language to those around them so they are not different, they would like to fit in. Although this may not seem true, it is actually a very frequent thing. People may also diverge their language to make as different from others as they can, like in Martha's Vineyard study (by Labov), this showed that the locals strengthened their pronunciations to make themselves an independent social group that are superior to the tourists. This suggests that people in Martha's Vineyard see that them changing their language is making their status higher than the tourists, so they are seen as more superior. Talking in the same way as those close to you could allow you to feel closer to them and them to accept you more.  There was a study done in 1987 in Belfast, it found that men lived in a much more close-knit friendship than women which showed that they spoke the same way within the group (linguistically homogenous) and due to peer pressure used more non-standard English when talking.  

It is common for people to judge a person on their accent or dialect. Should your accent matter? Should the words you use contribute to how someone sees you? People are still discriminated against for how they speak, but does that really mean they should change? 

Accents should not matter or affect how people see you, but they do. There have been multiple studies that show how accent effect what people think. 

Giles 1970's matched guise technique: People evaluated their personal qualities base on their voices. However what they didn't know that it was the same person doing different accents, this found that people were most impressed with received pronunciation and least impressed with the Birmingham accent. 

Giles capital punishment study: found that people preferred accents which are like their own.

People also judge how smart someone is due to their accent, received pronunciation is the most common to hear when watching the news as people perceive it as sounding smart. Berstein and Labov disproved this idea though as they did a study which found that there was not a clear link between intelligence and spoken language. This study shows that even though people may be prejudice towards certain accents, how they speak actually has nothing to do with how smart they are or how well they will do compared to those who have an accent that is associated with being smart.