Indigenous west country people are stereotyped as “Thick” in this report about advertising. – Shocking! Owl

[Probably why you don’t hear many Devonians speaking “broad”]

Channel 4 has recently commissioned a report on how Class and Social Grade are portrayed in the advertising industry entitled: Mirror on Class. 

It found:

“Our audit also highlighted that accent and manner of speech are often used as stereotypical signifiers of class in ads. This is a technique commonly acknowledged by media professionals, highlighting how the class issue we have in the ad industry is infiltrating our creatives and reinforcing negative biases – something we’ll go into more later in the chapter.”

“What we do is we borrow from lazy stereotypes. When you’re writing an ad for example, there’s some lazy stereotyping around accents – always put a Scottish voice on a bank ad because [the stereotype says] they’re really tight. If you want somebody to be a little bit thick, West Country accents. If you want to signify dirty-handed working class, stick a Brummie in it.”