Accents are a pivotal part of our shared lived experience. The way we speak shapes a lot of things in our everyday lives – how we see each other, how we relate, and who gets to belong. Accent, then, isn’t just a component of our speech, or a detached way of pronouncing words, but rather, a social practice. One that, as we’ll explore in subsequent passages, is deeply complex, dynamic, and political.

What follows are a few key insights from our research on accents in urban India, based on fieldwork in New Delhi and remote interviews across regions and professions, showing how accents work as dynamic social tools that both reflect and reinforce existing hierarchies.

Accents, Identity, and the Power Dynamics of Self-Presentation

Accents are often one of the most commonly recognisable signifiers of a person or community’s identity. Contrary to popular misconceptions, however, accents are not inherently tied to one’s nationality and religious identity. Instead, they develop within the person’s or community’s cultural background and material conditions. In socially stratified, multilingual cities like Delhi, accents are shaped by schooling, class, and mother tongue influence.

Accents are tied to personal and collective identity through what German philosopher Axel Honneth (1995) called a “recognition” – a social, emotional, and institutional identification with how one speaks. When an accent is judged or excluded, it feels like a denial of identity itself. Our fieldwork indicated that regional and working-class accents are commonly stigmatised, while urban ones – like the “South Delhi accent” highlighted by respondents – are idealised in elite spaces, shaping access to opportunity.

To fit dominant norms, individuals often engage in “code-switching” – shifting accents across contexts. A respondent from Bhubaneswar, studying at Hansraj College, described unconsciously imitating her affluent peers, later feeling she no longer sounded like herself. This reflects Goffman’s (1956) theory of “impression management,” where efforts to belong can create a deep tension between conformity and authenticity.

How Accents Shape Inclusion, Exclusion, and Everyday Hierarchies

Accents mark identity and shape social boundaries. In our fieldwork, respondents described how accents triggered everyday exclusion in classrooms, group conversations, and public spaces. Students with regional or working-class speech often felt misread or out of place. A law student from Nalanda shared that his accent made him self-conscious around peers from Delhi or Lucknow, observing that accents were the first way people “approved or dismissed a newcomer.”

Our findings parallel Bernstein’s (1971) theory of speech codes, where elaborated codes – linked to formal education and middle-class upbringing – are prioritised in institutions, while restricted codes – more common among working-class and regional speakers – are sidelined. The (perceived) legitimacy of certain accents becomes a gatekeeping mechanism, shaping access to networks, opportunity, and recognition.

Perceptions of accents are also deeply gendered. Women speaking in Western-sounding accents like the aforementioned “South Delhi accent” tend to be seen as “fake” and ascribed value judgements of superficiality. Impressions of regional male accents, on the other hand, range from being seen as “authentic” and “modest” to being called terms like “dehaati,” intended as classist slurs.

The Centrality of Pop Culture and the Internet in the Evolution of Accents

Cinema, media, and digital culture have played a pivotal role in shaping accent aspirations. Bollywood has historically used accents to symbolise class and ideas of morality.

For instance, in the 1970s, regional Hindi accents denoted authenticity and heroism; by the 2000s, polished, Westernised speech symbolised perceptions of urban mobility in the wake of 1991 economic reforms. Characters like Shah Rukh Khan in Kal Ho Naa Ho embodied global Indian elites, while “Hinglish” (a mixture of English and Hindi) songs normalised English as the emerging lingua franca of neoliberal India.

Today, social media extends this trend. Platforms like Instagram and YouTube popularise hybrid speech styles. Influencers often blend English with regional idiosyncrasies, producing norms around how Indians should sound. In the process, accents are a key site of identity performance in both real and virtual life.

“Accent Gurus” and the Commodification of Accents in the Neoliberal Age

Since the 1991 economic reforms, India’s neoliberal turn has reshaped not only markets but also how individuals present themselves. In the post-liberalisation service economy, English fluency—particularly in a “neutral” or Westernised accent – emerged as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986).  This dynamic further aligns with Gramsci’s (1971) idea of cultural hegemony, where American and British phonetics are normalised as aspirational.

Most interestingly, this rise of the neoliberal accent has been characterised by the rapid sprouting up of formal as well as informal coaching institutes, YouTube channels, and social media influencers. A quick search on Youtube about the topic would show a plethora of accent-oriented content, from bite-sized daily lessons to detailed explainers made by Indian “accent gurus” like Janhavi Panwar and Preeti Bedi (Figure 1) who frame accent correction as self-improvement, but also British and American creators looking to monetize the growing Indian demand for accent coaching (Figure 2). Most of their followers, largely middle and lower-middle-class youth, seek to polish their speech for social prestige and professional legitimacy.

Figure 1: A prominent Indian accent trainer with over 2 million subscribers, her content is largely comprised of quick tips on speech and accent modification.

Figure 2: American and British accent coaches have capitalised on the growing Indian demand for accent coaching

Conclusion

Our findings indicate that in a country as diverse and stratified as India, accents play a much larger role than we normally acknowledge. From shaping informal interactions to being marketed as skills for career advancement, accents have a complex, multifaceted social life. While we focused on English accents in urban India, there is a critical need for further rigorous research, most importantly on the caste dynamics of accents, and how different non-English accents are perceived by their respective speakers in both urban and rural India. The development of dedicated accent studies is crucial because it opens up new ways to understand how inequality is maintained and negotiated in everyday life.

References:

Honneth, A. (1995). The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts (J. Anderson, Trans.). Polity Press. (Original work published 1992).

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books.

Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, codes and control: Vol. 1. Theoretical studies towards a sociology of language. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Bloomsbury Academic.

Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. International Publishers Co.

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This piece is authored by a group of MA Sociology students at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi. Our interests converge around media, culture, and society.