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KATIE ALLEN unravels the accent stereotypes in fantasy TV series Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power.
You shall not paaaaass!”
This defiant challenge was proclaimed by Gandalf to the demonic Balrog in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. The drawn out ‘aaaa’ sound adds to the power of the declaration, but also gives it a Standard English – typically Southern UK – pronunciation. If the Burnley-born Ian McKellen had been cast as a Northern English speaking Gandalf – he would have used either a short vowel, or in drawing it out, sound like an American. This would have put the cat among the pigeons (or the Orc amongst the Hobbits!).
The way characters are cast with identifiable regional accents in TV or film can reinforce or subvert stereotypes. And the TV prequel to Tolkein’s masterpiece, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (which recently finished its second season) has drawn attention to this dilemma and has led to some criticism.
The series relates the battles to acquire a magical, supremely powerful ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron. The original trilogy’s already huge following was further enhanced by Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations (2001-2003) which garnered an even greater audience. So, when I heard that Amazon Prime was releasing the prequel – allegedly the most expensive TV production ever - a substantial, loyal viewership seemed a certainty. What I didn’t expect was the amount of backlash that the series would accrue.
Accent and social status
Naturally, in a fantasy series with a number of different races/species of characters, a variety of accents are useful to help differentiate them according to social status and power. However, a problem arises when these accent choices seem very akin to age old, British and Irish, stereotypes
In The Rings of Power, the Elves - the high born, blond, immortal and supernatural race - speak with a Received Pronunciation (‘posh English’) accent. The money-tight, thrift savvy, ginger-haired, alcohol drinking Dwarves speak with a Scottish accent. The evil, unruly and ununified race of Orcs, are Cockneys (London English). And the Harfoots - the live-off-the-land, superstitious, green-bedecked, fun-loving nomadic race – speak inevitably with an Irish accent.
Sociolinguists study the relationships between accent features and common, stereotyped attitudes to them.
Is a 'posh' accent good for your elf?
RP – the accent spoken by the Elves - is largely considered a ‘posh’ English accent which includes clearly pronounced /t/ sounds in the middle and end of words and a long vowel in words like ‘past’ ([ɑː]). RP accents are often associated with a higher class, and level of education and power, a stereotype that is emphasised by sociolinguist, Trudgill (2001), who claims that RP “is the accent of English English with the highest status”.
A common defining feature of a Scottish accent is the tapped (sometimes rolled) ‘r’ sound as well as fewer vowel sounds - for example ‘not’ and ‘ought’ are both pronounced with the vowel sound in ‘ought’. Common stereotypes of associated with being Scottish usually include drinking, being grumpy and tight with money, which characterise some of the personalities of the Dwarves in the series.
A distinguishing feature of an Irish accent – as spoken by the Harfoots - is the pronunciation of words with a ‘th’ sound such as ‘three’ like ‘tree’ and ‘this’ as ‘dis’. Irish accents are stereotypically (and wrongly) associated with lack of intelligence, irresponsibility and free spiritedness.
The Orcs’ Cockney accents are typically associated with the glottalization of ‘t’ sounds at the middle and end of words, so that rather than pronounce it as a /t/, it is replaced by a glottal stop – a short burst of air coming from the glottis – in a word like ‘bottle’, which some claim is lazy speech. This urban working-class accent is stereotypically associated with low levels of class, status and education.
Fast-track world-building
The show’s creators have clearly used accents to help make clear distinctions between the different groups of protagonists in the story. All four of these races are introduced in the first episode, so to help the viewer differentiate them the simplest (and perhaps laziest?) way to make distinctions is their speech mannerisms. An easy way out to avoid ‘wasting’ an episode on some meaningful world-building perhaps?
Why not make the mud loving, berry eating, bare-footed characters have an RP accent? I’m not sure whether it would strike me as odd if the Harfoots spoke a form of ‘posh’ English. But something about them being given an Irish accent just doesn’t sit right.
Sir Lenny Henry (British actor and comedian) who plays a Harfoot in the series said in an interview with GQ (Allen, 2022) that “they wanted everybody else to feel like they’re part of a community” and that “they wanted an identifiable Celtic-rooted dialect for the Harfoots”.
The Guardian reported that dialect coach to the series, Leith McPherson, has 25 years experience and was attempting to make the accents broad enough so they couldn’t be narrowed down to a specific area, e.g. “a particular cross street in Dublin”. Guardian writer Andy Welch, however, claims that the Harfoots “seem like a crudely drawn cartoon”, citing the academic and author Conrad Brunstrom who stated that “What we’re worried about is that there’s an ‘accent’ that is identified globally as ‘Irish’ that somehow still means ‘primitive’.”
Reinforcing Irish stereotypes?
The Guardian also quotes Natalie Braber, professor of linguistics at Nottingham Trent university: “Accent is such a huge portion of who we are,” she said. “To mock that, or to use that accent as shorthand for someone who is stupid, or whatever trait it is, is offensive. Irish people have faced discrimination for centuries based on their identity, so I’m not surprised this has caused upset.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to stop watching the show because there are plenty of things to commend it. I just think that with a budget as big as the show had ($1 billion), employing a linguist who isn’t going to pander to and reinforce negative stereotypes may have been a good way of avoiding all of the negative opinions they’ve received since.
Yes, it’s a work of complete fiction, and accents were used in an attempt to make easy (and lazy?) distinctions between the characters in what could definitely be seen as a complex world. However, the accent and character combinations are often too close to real world stereotypes and that can have real-world consequences for people speaking with less prestigious accents.
With transmission of the second season complete, it’ll be interesting to see if the accent backlash stays as pronounced as that of the first one!
References:
Trudgill, P. (2001). Sociolinguistics of modern RP. Resources and Tools in Speech, Hearing and Phonetics.
Written by KATIE ALLEN (BA English Language student, University of Chester, UK)
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