BBC Voices

Aims
To find out what people think of different accents across the United Kingdom. 

Methodology 
An online poll that was was conducted in 2004 in which 5,000 participants were asked to rank celebrities on how pleasant and how appealing their accents were.

Findings
Sean Connery was popular in the poll with his Edinburgh accent he was followed by Sir Trevor McDonald because of his RP accent. Followed by Radio 2 news reader Moira Stewart and Actor Pierce Brosnan. Participants were favourable to accents which are very similar to their own, for example; English people rated Hugh Grant's RP accent very highly whereas Scottish people were more favourable to Ewan McGregor's accent. This theme continued throughout the poll with people voting for accents that were from their own country such as Ian Paisly from Northern Ireland which was last favourable everywhere other than his home country.

Conclusion
Overall people favoured accents from their own country and disliked accents from other countries with the exception of Sean Connery who was favoured in all countries. Other accents which were favoured everywhere were Moira Stewart's and Sir Trevor McDonald's. 

Evaluation
The polls results could be seen as affected by the celebrities personal appeal rather than their accent. This could prove why Sir Trevor McDonald and Moira Stewart were favourable in the poll. Factors that could have affected the results of the poll could be; social class, cultural background and maybe the country in which they are from.