Ever since Daniel Jones's pioneering study on the social reaction to variations in British accents, interest in the topic has led linguistic researchers to conduct a number of interesting studies which have shown that social attitudes to regional and non-regional accents have somewhat shifted over time. Indeed, it is worthwhile to investigate some of the conclusions Jones drew in order to evaluate whether they might still hold up in today's moral climate.
             Jones was a proponent of what may be considered to be the liberal interpretation of variation in speech. First published in Great Britain in the 1930s, Jones's intention was to elucidate variations in British pronunciation in order to understand why certain accents were considered to be "vulgar" or "ugly" by others. Jones determined that southern British accents were preferable by the majority of society to northern accents. But there was also a class-based issue at stake, as the more privileged members of society generally speak without a regional accent.
             Of course, the issue on accents in Britain was not so clear-cut then, as Jones was at pains to point out:
             One discovery which the observer of phonetic phenomena makes at quite an early stage of his studies is that he finds he actually uses a great many pronunciations which at first he might have been tempted to condemn. Another is that when you listen carefully to the speech of those who condemn particular forms of pronunciation, you will often hear them use the very pronunciations they are condemning (Jones 1930, 29).
             The implication is that, despite the fact that people consciously or unconsciously judge others based on their accents, there is no such thing as a completely "pure" British accent.
             Despite this clear implication, Jones nevertheless espoused the teaching of "proper" British pronunciation, going so far as to give recommendations for t...