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UCL in the News: BBC seeks teens with 'posh' accents
24 July 2007
Casting directors at the BBC have been unable to find actresses for a new period drama because so few teenage girls can now speak with cut glass accents.
John Wells, emeritus professor of phonetics at UCL, said the spread of estuary English had been exaggerated, but the accents of different social classes had converged over recent decades.
"It's bound up with social class and social strata," he said.
"The upper class and the upper middle class now feel under great pressure to be like those lower down the social scale." …
Ben Farmer, 'Daily Telegraph'
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