Doolittle

Having a tough time of it?  Don't "correct" yer accent, soften it:

"A broad regional accent might hold you in good stead in some jobs, but can be a drawback in more upwardly mobile careers. 'There may be some kind of expectation that, if you’ve secured a good degree and aced teacher training, then why didn’t you modify your accent as a linguistic means to signal that you are moving up in the world,' says Dr Alex Baratta, a lecturer at the Manchester Institute of Education.

'Accents tell you as much about what we project on to people as anything to do with the actual people,' says Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. How you perceive accents can be dependent on your proximity to the location of the accent, she says. She grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, where the Liverpudlian accent was considered 'metropolitan'. This contrasts with the animus that some Mancunians have towards a scouse accent, and the romanticism some Americans hear in its cadences.

Since I have been in London, I have become conscious of what my accent signals – northerners are often depicted as being louts or simpletons in the southern-centric media. During the first few ice-breakers at university, I was told by a well-spoken southerner that I sounded like Karl Pilkington, of An Idiot Abroad fame.

My adult students explained to me that a Daegu accent doesn't map as "stupid" or "poor" so much as "antagonistic" towards Seoul folks.

Make of that what you will.