With just one week to go until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Team GB is rallying the nation to lend its voice to inspire the Olympians that will represent them and their communities on the world’s biggest sporting stage.
As 327 Team GB athletes will be taking to the tracks and pools of Paris, people from all corners of the UK have come together to cheer on the team. Penned by writer Harry Baker, the piece pays homage to the local nuances that make up the UK so that the athletes feel a sense of home.
This comes as research reveals that three-quarters of Brits are proud of their accent, with nearly half of those stating that their accent is a key part to their identity (48%). The research also unveils that over half of Brits (53%) feel more inspired when hearing an accent that sounds like theirs, with local slang making people feel at home (43%) and offering a sense of belonging (30%). 15% of Brits even like that other people won’t understand certain words.
Professor Rob Drummond, expert in socio-linguistics, shares the science in why how something is said has such a huge impact; “The way we speak is fundamentally linked to who we are, to our sense of identity. Our accent and dialect can provide clues as to where we’re from, our social background, and how we identify in relation to other groups of people.
“Both consciously and unconsciously, the way we speak is a tool we can use to help manage our relationships with the people around us. It’s one way of saying ‘I belong to this group’, or ‘I associate with these values’. Even when people seem to be saying the same thing, how they say it can make all the difference, and people often have very strong feelings about these differences.
“Spoken language is wonderfully diverse, and that diversity is something that should be recognised, highlighted, and most of all, enjoyed.”
Whether it’s ‘sound’ like a Liverpudlian Katarina Johnson-Thompson, or ‘reight’ as York’s Sam Dickinson would say – Team GB wants to hear your support for the athletes representing where they came from.
You can watch the full ‘Accents of Greatness’ video at https://youtu.be/WdzANUBug_I