To wonder why it's acceptable to make fun of posh accents?

[stranton18]

I have a cousin who lives in Ireland but has lived in the UK and Canada. She has a hybrid accent from all places.

One annoying thing she has noticed about living in Ireland is how acceptable it is to mock posh accents. Her accent would be described as D4 and Canadian but it's not put on at all. Despite this, posh Irish accents seem to generally be the target or ridicule. She hasn't experienced this much at all while living in London and some people even complimented her accent.

It seems like a double standard because if she/posh people made fun of working class accents, it would be seen as horrible but the reverse is fine.

Punching up rather than punching down I guess. Always been a thing - although I would also say plenty of people do take the piss out of things they see as 'chavvy'.

Because people assume a posh accent means you're wealthy and well-connected, so making fun of it is 'punching up' rather than 'punching down'. Humour that 'punches up' is seen as a lot more acceptable.

What the previous posters have said.

However, people make fun of strong regional accents all the time and play up to the cliches associated with them.

This. And it never crosses people's minds that a person with a posh accent might be uncomfortable about being perceived as "posh" so you're seen as fair game.

I used to get kids taking the piss out of my accent at primary school in a small farming community. We weren't particularly posh and we certainly weren't rich but I spoke with an RP accent because my parents did and my dad was a white collar worker so we stood out in that community. I hated it and deliberately "countrified" my accent to fit in for years. To this day I still find very upper class accents unpleasant and triggering because it reminds me of that.

People will take the piss out of any accent that's different. It just goes with the territory. But I suppose posh people are not a persecuted minority so it's a first world problem.

I was bullied a lot for having a 'posh accent' in primary school, I wasn't actually posh at all - English is my second language and I learnt the accent from English language learning video tapes (where the characters all spoke with RP).

I wouldn’t have thought it’s any more acceptable than taking the piss out of regional accents, which still happens all the time.

It’s punching up, as others have said, so it’s fine. It’s still advantageous to be well-spoken (I have an anomalous RP accent myself after speech training following hearing loss as a child, and the accent without the background has definitely opened doors, which is unfair and therefore it’s fair game for humour.)

The D4 accent in general is seen as affected and pretentious by many Irish people, and with good enough reason as you’ll see from the link below. That’s the issue. It’s not an accent that has developed ‘naturally’ like most others. It was a studied attempt to sound less Irish, posher. So fair game for that reason perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_English

Of course 'posh' people make fun of WC people. As do not so posh people who want to be seen as posher. WC accents, clothing, home decor, choice of holiday, education, names of their children, all fair game.
And it's less acceptable than the other way round. Because it would be silly to pretend that being 'posh' isn't a privilege and more desirable than being WC, and therefore having a marker of your poshness pointed out is not an insult or put down in the same way it would be to point out someone's lower class identifiers.

I'm in England and not entirely sure I'd be able to tell a posh Irish or Canadian accent from a normal Irish or Canadian accent. Might just be me though

@stranton18 as a Geordie married to someone with an RP accent. It's never acceptable to mock someone for having an RP accent or a regional accent. I know plenty of people with RP accents who don't have two pennies to rub together and plenty of people with regional accents who are rather wealthy.

A bit like we’re allowed to comment on too thin people, apparently. But heaven forbid we comment on a person being too fat. Same old hypocrisy.

Making fun of immigrants is punching down.

I'm another ESL immigrant. There were enough of us in primary that we didn't really stand out, apart from the English teachers correcting our pronunciation, but at secondary I was mocked for my accent and idioms. So I consciously chose certain teachers to model myself on. The mocking eventually stopped (of my speaking, any way).

l'm still an immigrant. I'm still not posh. I just sound like I am.

It’s not acceptable but it’s more
commonly tolerated

It's not just accents.

It's seen as acceptable to deride, mock, ridicule, criticise etc anything that is seen as an offshoot of privilege. I think the UK is particularly prone to this attitude, and I think it is becoming more prevalent too.

I think that's quite a one-sided attitude though.

I know lots of very privileged young people who now speak with adopted WC accents and do all sorts of things to hide any markers of their privilege.

I think posh people may disagree that having poshness pointed out isn't an insult.

Very often it is loaded with implications of being undeserving, unaware, less able and somehow an acceptable target for all kinds of negative consequences etc.

To be fair, I don’t think it’s reserved for just posh accents.

I’ve grown up in London with 2 very much east end cockney parents. My accent has had the piss taken out of it many times by city work colleagues from elsewhere in the country. I just remind them that it’s literally the accent of the place they have chosen to move to and that usually shuts them up.

I think all accents get this treatment tbh!

Maybe. But less so than having a strong regional accent is associated with lower intelligence. Particularly if you're from the West Midlands or some parts of the North. And not being familiar with certain etiquette because its outside of your experience marks you as being gauche.
I agree that pretending to be WC can be a trend amongst some privileged young people. It doesn't tend to last though, or be something they do when it matters, such as at professional interviews.

I’m pretty middle class and I can’t say I’ve heard anyone mocking posh accents, but I definitely hear people mocking working class ones. I think you make fun of what feels uncomfortable and alien to you.

We haven't had a thread along the lines of 'regional accents make the speaker sound stupid and uneducated' and 'RP is a neutral accent', 'why are people picking on my friend of a friend's aunt's cousin's hairdresser's dog's cousin's daughter for her accent?' for at least a month now.

Do we really need to start up another batch of them?

There are some fair points here, and I can agree with you on some of this.

But I do think posh people can feel posh as a hindrance in many circumstances - and I actually disagree about the job interviews! Most of the poshos I know adopted it around that time as it played against them in uni interviews, diversity quotas etc.

People make fun of northern, west midlands and Essex accents all the time.

It seems like a double standard because if she/posh people made fun of working class accents, it would be seen as horrible but the reverse is fine.

People with a “posh” accent make fun of working class people all the time. Even people who are not really working class but have a regional accent that might broadly be working class.

There isn't a posh Canadian accent, there are no strong class markers as in the U.K.