I love Radio 5 Live. I really do. I listen a lot and I listen closely.
I especially like listening to the voices of its presenters and reporters, and detecting where some of the regional accents come from.
Some are very neutral but classless, and others have a hint of a region about them, like Phil Williams (Brummie), Shelagh Fogarty (Scouse) and Nicky Campbell (Scots).
I like their playful banter and wordplay around regional accents. Of all the national BBC stations, R5 Live sounds like the national ‘water cooler’ - an authentic reflection of the UK.
But there’s a trend towards fake Northenness recently – where the Southern-accented radio professional bottles out of using the London broad ‘a’ as in ‘arsk’ (read it out) and Northernises it.
Linguists call it code shifting, when people mentally and vocally adjust to their audience.
Take film critic Mark Kermode, the be-quiffed cultural commissar whose partisan film reviews can be heard not only on R5 Live but also seen on BBC 2′s Culture Show.
Mr K will say: ‘I asked renowned director Tarantino…” and the ‘asked’ will sound the flat Mancunian ‘a’ but the rest of it will sound well-travelled North London, his authentic voice. He also Northern-ised ‘constrooctivism’ on last week’s Culture Show.
Now, he may say that his University years in Manchester left an imprint on his accent.
But in the same way I used to cringe when Tony Blair would say: “yer know” and perform Cockney glottal stops, I wince when I hear the Radio 5 Live-rs shifting codes to make them sound a bit more Northern.
Maybe they are just practising their Northern accents for when R5 Live moves to Media City?
Tags: bbc, Media City, Radio 5 Live
