Last week, America’s political junkies were transfixed by the spectacle of Fiona Hill, Donald Trump’s former Russia advisor, giving testimony to Congress in the impeachment hearings. For a day or two, she blew up the Internet. This article gives an idea of the impact she had. On our side of the ocean, some people were even lamenting that she couldn’t run for President – because, you see, she’s not a natural-born citizen.
Before I continue, in the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to mention that I used to know Fiona Hill pretty well. That’s because we went to college together, took many of the same courses, and downed cider and beer in the same smoky, crowded pubs. It was typical student stuff of no political interest to anybody, unless you think that playing drinking games in a chilly house across from the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral is a matter of grave national import. Since then, our paths have diverged.
What was most striking to my ear was that she still sounded very much as I remember her from those undergraduate days. She has spent about three decades in the United States, yet her accent remains firmly Northern English. I am sure that someone from her native region would be able to point out the ways in which it has become Americanized, but to my untrained ear her voice has hardly changed at all.
She stated: “I grew up poor, with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement.” Fiona grew up in County Durham. While the city of Durham is a beautiful old university town, the surrounding area is sort of the Appalachia of England – a region of ongoing economic difficulties, where the mines dried up and other industry withered. She pointed out that her background didn’t hold her back in America.
Now, accent and its relation to class, region, status and nationality in the UK is a very complicated subject, and I don’t intend to get into it here. But there’s an important aspect of her story that is easy to overlook. One reason why Fiona’s accent was not an impediment was because she moved from a country where accents are perceived to have greater or lesser prestige, to another country where all accents from her country of origin have high prestige.
Many British people have a hard time believing this, but it is, broadly speaking, true. Most Americans can’t discern geographical or class origins from an English accent. This was evident in some of the American responses to her testimony. One online detractor even made reference to “Fiona Hill with that Prince Andrew accent,” a comment likely to evoke fits of laughter from British readers. It is sometimes said that “Americans automatically add 10 points to someone’s IQ when they hear an English accent.” (Sometimes it’s 15 or even 20 IQ points.)
The fact of the matter is that accent-based prejudice is alive and well right here in the good ol’ US of A. If Fiona spoke like a rural Appalachian – probably the closest analogue to her native speech in social terms – many people would have dismissed her as a “hillbilly” or a “hick” upon hearing her speak. You won’t hear this type of speech much at the State Department or at Harvard. (By the way: the guys in the video above are from North Carolina, which like her native county boasts a well-known university town called Durham.)
In the preface to probably his most famous play, George Bernard Shaw wrote that “it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.” He also supposedly said that “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.” Last week showed us that Shaw’s observations still have some relevance, on both sides of the ocean.