I’m not new to (over) thinking deeply about the world. I started my Substack a month ago and called it Curiosity Kills Algorithms because I am a perpetual worrier about the time we spend online and what it’s doing to us as human beings. My Substack isn’t about one thing in particular, it’s simply my attempt to explore things that I’m curious about. To take a second and pause. Reflect on what I really think and feel about things. It’s hard to protect our own feelings when we’re often told what to think and feel by our own personal echo chambers.
My first attempt to pause and think led me to write about my Geordie accent. I’ve always viewed my accent as a core part of who I am and how I’ve moved through the world. At first, it started with a simple reflection of what it means to be a Geordie with an accent in decline. But, after some ruminating, it struck me that it’s a subject far bigger than just lil’ old me.
British people have always been obsessed with social class. I’ve recently moved to Australia where, despite clear socioeconomic differences, the concept of ‘social class’ is almost meaningless. In the UK, accents and social class are irretrievably intertwined. We are all guilty of making assumptions of a person’s background just by the way they say the word ‘bath.’
Living with a regional accent, it’s so easy to internalise these stereotypes. For me, it can be fun to play up to people’s idea of a ‘Geordie’ for the entertainment of others. Or perhaps, as a Geordie with a fading accent, to prove something to myself. It’s a performance. It’s called Geordie theatre, pet!
This guest article is an attempt to confront my Geordieness in all its complexities! It speaks to the mental toll it can take on a person to suppress who they are by silencing such a big part of yourself. It’s a silent reality for so many people with regional accents across the UK. At 26, I wish I was told sooner to be loud and proud about the way I sound. To not attempt to contort my voice, and self, to fit neatly into society’s idea of speaking ‘correctly.’ I am learning that there is no ‘correct’ way of speaking.
What’s in a voice?
My relationship with my Geordie accent is somewhat contradictory. I love the way we say “cook-book”, I love saying “Mam” instead of Mum, I love putting “man” at the end of a sentence to denote my passion for a given situation. My Geordie accent has always given me a strong sense of regional pride for my hometown of Newcastle. It’s a bridge between where I have been, who I am and the places I now navigate.
Yet, unconsciously or not, I have spent my adult life dumbing it down, refining my pronunciation, replacing my region’s infamous slang with seemingly more respectable English. The way I speak alternates between a loud and proud Northerner who wants everyone to know where I’m from, to not having an accent at all. My voice is in some weird form of purgatory, not knowing who it wants to be.
At 26, I’m learning to live out something I’ve always known, to be loud and proud about the way I sound and the voice I have. That means resisting the urge to contort my voice, and my sense of identity, to fit some sort of societal idea of ‘correct’ speech. I am coming to understand that no voice needs correcting or reframing. My voice is a big part of who I am and the story of where I come from and how I belong.
Currently, I couldn’t be physically further away from my homeland if I tried. I’ve spent the last few months travelling Asia before settling in Australia for a year. Recently, I’ve introduced myself to new people more times than I could count. What’s your name? Where are you from? What do you do for work? At the start of travelling, my boyfriend would answer the second question by saying we were both from London, since that is the city that we met and have lived in for the last five+ years. Of course, it’s a rational answer, who has time for the details? But a part of me always died inside. I eventually pulled him aside to embarrassingly admit that it hurt my spirit. From then on, he always said he was from London and I was from Newcastle (which a lot of people outside of the UK or Europe haven’t heard of anyway!) which always made the interaction twice as long as it needed to be. Still, my spirit was weirdly vindicated.
Don’t get me wrong, people do love the Geordie accent and the typical Geordie nature. Please don’t get out your imaginary small violins. We speak funny, we’re a good laugh, we like a drink, and we’re devoted to our football. The majority of mocking comes down to playful teasing, which I generally enjoy when it’s new people who are just trying to find a way to connect, and it gives me an easy excuse to talk about my homeland.
Newcastle’s linguistic repertoire can provide endless entertainment for the unacquainted. Some of my favourite Geordie-isms include to “gan yem” (to go home, which I discovered from a Danish friend derives from the Danish word for home, hjem), “howay man” meaning c’mon (yes we genuinely do say this, even outside of football!) “Wor” (meaning ‘our’) is often used as a term of endearment before speaking of a relative. It’s not just Auntie Julie its “wor/our Julie” It would be blasphemous if my mam ever referred to her sister as just Julie!
Yet, sometimes when I share that I’m from Newcastle, harmful stereotypes and assumptions about us, and people from the North in general, become apparent.
Windows into politics and pop-culture
People from the North East are told time and time again that we’re difficult to understand. It’s an accent revered for its quirkiness and musicality yet ridiculed for being slang-laden and incoherent at times. It’s what we’re known for and what we pride ourselves in, we probably even exaggerate it at times for comical effect. But our accent often means we aren’t taken as seriously by the outside world. The Geordie accent isn’t alone in presenting a window in political and pop-culture references.
While debating Magaret Thatcher’s devastating economic policy towards Northern Industry throughout the 1980s, a young Michael Gove clambered to her defence, painting a rather visceral image of the barbaric Northerner:
“… the happy South stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the Northerner”
Perhaps it was hyperbole or political pantomime (and in my personal opinion… who gives a flying **** about Michael Gove anyway?), but it does speak to an enduring power dynamic between the North and South. Not only does the South hold political dominance over the North of England, but the decision-makers are primarily all cut from the same socio-economic cloth; they look the same, grew up the same, and crucially, they all sound the same.
Accent biases reflects our longtime obsession with social class in the UK, as conclusions are drawn about who a person is and their capabilities from the way they sound when they open their mouth. Dr Cole from the University of Essex researched how accent discrimination reproduces inequality in the UK:
“Prejudice towards an accent nearly always reflects societal prejudices towards the groups that speak with that accent. For instance, if an accent is considered to be lazy, sloppy or incoherent, we often find that this reflects the way that the speakers of that accent are perceived.”
As Geordies, language idiosyncrasies connect us to a region which has suffered a lot of historical hardship and political disillusionment. Meanwhile, Geordieness does hold reasonable clout in British popular culture. You don’t need to be a Geordie or have visited the North East to get these references either.
A Byker lass, Cheryl Cole was the golden girl of the 2000s who showed young Geordie girls that you could sound unpolished and ‘rough around the edges’ yet still be loved by the British public. Of course, when Geordie Shore came along in 2011, the pre-existing stereotypes of Geordies being heavy drinkers and socially boisterous, were firmly reinstated into the zeitgeist. More recently, 28 Years Later features a post-apocalyptic zombie infested North East and parts of Newcastle. The premier for the film was held in Newcastle at the historic Tyneside cinema. Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle praised the North East as a “magic” place to make films. But rest assured, it isn’t just zombies we do well on screen. The region has featured in many Hollywood instalments such as Harry Potter, Transformers and, more recently, Indiana Jones.
It’s always a nice surprise to hear the familiar homely twang of a Geordie accent on the big screen, but I wish I heard it more. Cultural representation is important. The culture we consume has the power to inform our opinions and shape our understanding of the world around us, and can ultimately reinforce our own biases.
Psychology of accent anxiety
Being in Australia is not the first time I’ve been away from home. When I was making my university choices, my 17-year-old self vowed to get as far away from Newcastle as I could. Most of my friends stayed North, and most southerners also moved North, a place of dreams for any young person wanting cheap drinks and a mental (or radge in Geordie speak) night out.
Miraculously, I got into UCL to study History and made the big move to London.
Moving south was the first time I had to confront how I spoke, my accent laid bare to my new peers. To speak and sound different to everyone around you, as an anxious 18 year old trying to find their voice, was unbelievably stressful. I still have nightmares about my UCL seminars, filled with majority private-school attendees, who were educated with a level of self-belief and innate confidence that I would have to spend a lifetime trying to build.
There was probably the odd elitist w***** who heard me speak and assumed I was less educated because of my northernness. But on reflection, my accent anxiety probably came down to my own internalisation of the Geordie stereotypes, rather than trying to challenge these myths, I would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are countless studies that show that if you enter an interaction with self-doubt, like worrying that someone can’t understand you or is judging you by the way you speak, you will perceive that person to be critical and judgemental, regardless of their demeanour. While accent bias is real, a lot of the time it’s not a deliberate discriminatory act. Most of our biases are unconscious, entrenched into society, without us even realising. Still overtime, the pressure of fitting in away from home started to be revealed, a burden which diluted the way I spoke in seminars, and which I eventually carried with me into the workplace.
Of course, it’s normal to create a second version of yourself in formal settings or professional environments. Perhaps we have a work voice, or a work laugh like Chandler Bing. Sean has written about his own experiences on these themes and the way in which income, budgets and social influences can interweave.
My problem is that over time, this second-self has trickled down into my real self, contorting such a defining part of the Geordie identity, therefore reshaping my connection to home. Or my external connection to home as perceived by others.
Come ere’ pet!
The Sutton Trust published a report called ‘Speaking Up’ back in 2022. Drawing on research into accent bias across the life course, it explores how people learn early which voices carry authority and which are treated as less credible, less intelligent, or less professional. It examines accent anxiety, everyday discrimination, and the quiet calculations people make about whether to soften, hide, or change the way they speak in order to get on. It also shows how these experiences are not evenly distributed, but are shaped by socioeconomic background and intersect with other aspects of identity such as gender, race, age and sexuality.
What makes this research particularly important is that it doesn’t treat accent as a superficial issue or a matter of personal confidence. Instead, it situates accent within long-standing structures of power and to the ways language norms continue to reproduce advantage for a small, already privileged group. You read this report because accent is not just about sound, it’s about access. It’s about whose voices are trusted, whose stories are believed, and who feels entitled to speak in the first place. If we are serious about social tackling inequality, boosting inclusion and belonging, we have to pay attention not just to what is said in public life, but how it is allowed to sound.
I was born and raised in Newcastle, that fact will never change. But as I cling on for dear life, am I still a Geordie if our accent is the defining characteristic? An accent may be an external marker of where you come from. But when the time does come for me to return home, I know I will have nothing to prove to my fellow Geordies who, regardless of how strong my accent is, will welcome me back to the Toon with open arms, telling me “come ‘ere, pet.”
You can hear more of Eleanor’s voice through the following link
Substack: https://substack.com/@curiositykillsalgorithims
Eleanor writes,
“My blog is a safe little internet nook far away from the algorithms destroying our ability to think about the world and to want better for ourselves. Never will I ever use AI to write. Everything on my page is entirely and proudly human-made inside and out!”
