Voice, Identity, and
Code-Switching in the Creative Industries
Introduction
In creative industries, including film, theatre, advertising, and media, voice is not neutral. Accent is not neutral. Both are coded. Both are read. And often, both are adjusted.
For many professionals from marginalised backgrounds, survival in these fields means code-switching. Softening a regional accent. Borrowing different phrasing. Rehearsing fluency in someone else’s voice. It becomes habit. Sometimes conscious. Often not. A 2023 industry report found that over three quarters of creative workers felt pressure to change how they speak to be taken seriously (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023). This is not simply a professional concern. It is a cultural one. A social one. A personal one. Reporting shows that young creatives from working-class backgrounds continue to be blocked from entry into the industry (The Sutton Trust, 2024). Accent bias is part of this blockage. What is perceived as polish is often proximity to a dominant accent. What is perceived as presence is often privilege rehearsed aloud.
This project is a close listening. A study of voice. Of how voice is shaped, edited, and sometimes lost within creative labour. It moves through empirical research, testimony, and theory. Bourdieu’s symbolic violence offers a central lens. But no framework replaces lived knowledge.
What emerges is not a single argument. It is a pattern. Identity fragmentation. Emotional labour. Belonging and exclusion. These themes repeat across disciplines. They sit at the centre of creative life. Often unnamed.
Identity Fragmentation and Emotional Labour
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being heard incorrectly. From being heard too much. From not being heard at all.
Many who code-switch describe this as a split. A doubling. One voice for work. One for elsewhere. And neither feels quite right.
These are not isolated experiences. They echo broader patterns. Reports show that only a small fraction of top actors and musicians come from working-class backgrounds. The class divide in creative education and employment continues to widen (The Sutton Trust, 2024; O’Brien et al., 2018).
The emotional cost is cumulative. To speak in a way that protects you. To speak in a way that erases you. This is the tension. The need to soften. To rehearse. To listen to yourself as others might.
In the same 2023 survey, 81 percent of creative professionals admitted to changing their accent or behaviour at work to be taken more seriously (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023). It is often presented as strategy. As polish. But the root is discomfort. A sense of conditional belonging.
This is emotional labour. A constant recalibration. The subtle work of reshaping presence to match a room. It accumulates. It depletes. For those who must constantly change their manner of speech, a core part of their identity, it leads to higher rates of burnout and anxiety (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023).
Code-switching might increase perceptions of professionalism. But it comes at a cost. A fractured sense of self. Ongoing stress. A persistent sense of being out of place. These experiences are not abstract. They shape how voice is used, and how it is held, within the creative world.
Affective Consequences: Emotion, Belonging, and Exclusion
While structures of power and performance help explain why code-switching happens, lived experience helps us understand how it feels. Voice carries weight. For speakers. For listeners. Accent bias generates a complex emotional terrain. Shame. Pride. Fear. Confidence. Alienation. Belonging.
These responses are not abstract. They are felt. In the chest. In the breath. In the silence before speaking. In many creative environments, the atmosphere quietly privileges certain voices. Some people feel they belong before saying anything. Others enter already aware of their difference.
For those with what might be called an outsider accent, that difference arrives early. It surfaces as tension. As second-guessing. As the sense that your voice precedes you. A 2023 report revealed that 69 percent of creative professionals rarely hear voices like their own in the workplace (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023). That absence does something. It accumulates. It shapes a feeling. I am not meant to be here.
This emotional burden does not come from the work itself. It comes from the ongoing need to adjust. To listen to yourself as others might. To soften. To scan. To rehearse. These behaviours reflect more than professionalism. They are emotional labour. A kind of care work performed on the self. Over time, it produces dissonance. Fatigue. A quiet sense of disconnection.
Symbolic violence plays out here not only through exclusion, but through how people internalise the terms of acceptance. Voice becomes careful. Manner becomes strategic. This is how legitimacy is maintained, not just through hiring or critique, but through subtle forms of self-regulation (Bourdieu, 1991; Lippi-Green, 1997).
For many, the home voice becomes a source of quiet shame. Not because of what it is, but because of how it has been received. Corrected. Imitated. Ignored. Research confirms that regional and working-class accents are frequently criticised in professional settings, reinforcing a culture of caution and restraint (The Sutton Trust, 2022). These moments leave traces. They show up in hesitation. In restraint. In decisions not to speak.
But voice is not only a site of anxiety. It can also become a site of strength. Some individuals choose not to code-switch. They choose to speak in their own register. To let their accent carry. They reclaim it as signal, not signal failure.
These choices matter. In theatre, in music, in visual work, in critique spaces, some creatives deliberately blend registers. They infuse their practice with regional rhythm or linguistic play. What was once framed as deviation becomes presence. The voice becomes method. It becomes material.
These moments resonate. They generate connection. The feeling of hearing someone speak like you. The ache of never hearing it. These are not incidental. They are political.
Creative industries carry emotional climates. They validate some voices. They edit others. They do so quietly. Often politely. But always structurally.
Creative Labour, Class, and the Myth of Meritocracy
TThe dynamics of code-switching and accent bias are inseparable from questions of class and creative labour. The creative industries have long promoted a narrative of meritocracy, the idea that talent and originality outweigh background. But this story falters under scrutiny. Structural inequalities persist. Voice and accent, often treated as incidental, become markers of class origin. And class origin remains one of the quiet gatekeepers in creative work.
The dominant habitus of the creative field, in Bourdieu’s terms, signals what a cultured actor, designer, or writer is supposed to sound like. White. Southern. Middle class. This often means that performers or creatives from working-class or regional backgrounds feel pressure to adjust their speech to fit a narrow professional ideal. Received Pronunciation becomes the unspoken benchmark for legitimacy, credibility, and intellect (Bourdieu, 1991; Lippi-Green, 1997).
The result is often affective. Those who grew up speaking otherwise may carry a quiet sense of misfit. A loss of ease. A learned hesitation.
Code-switching becomes a tactic. A way to move through creative networks shaped by those with elite cultural capital. But this adjustment comes at a cost. It reduces variety. It narrows what is heard. It limits what is imagined.
When a casting director cannot picture a lead character speaking in a Midlands or Liverpool accent unless framed as a stereotype, the loss is not just personal. It is cultural. The landscape becomes thinner. Less representative. Less surprising.
This hierarchy has been noted. A 2023 report outlines a pecking order of regional accents in professional settings, where strong Scouse or Brummie accents are seen as incompatible with perceived professionalism (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023). At the same time, individuals from privileged backgrounds are often encouraged to act down, adopting regional dialects for authenticity, while working-class creatives are rarely allowed to act up without being questioned.
This asymmetry reveals a deeper cultural logic. Versatility is admired when it moves downward. When it moves upward, it is policed. Authenticity, too, is conditional. Those who speak in dominant accents are assumed flexible. Others must prove their voice deserves to remain.
Bourdieu would describe this as symbolic violence. The assumption that some accents are more appropriate than others is not framed as exclusion. It is framed as taste. As refinement. As fit (Bourdieu, 1991). And so, those with the wrong accent must justify themselves. Those with the right accent are allowed to play anyone, including voices they do not share.
The structures of creative labour amplify this logic. The work is informal. Precarious. Dependent on access, on ease, on affinity. Accent becomes a password. A kind of social code. An indicator of who belongs.
This is what Bourdieu called social capital. Sharing a linguistic style with someone in power creates instant rapport. A different accent can create subtle doubt. Subtle distance.
This is why accent bias continues to limit socio-economic diversity in the arts. According to The Sutton Trust, working-class young people remain underrepresented in creative degrees and careers (The Sutton Trust, 2024). A cycle of similar voices, both literal and figurative, continues to shape hiring, funding, and progression.
The emotional cost is ongoing. For those trying to break in, modulation becomes part of the labour. The pause before speaking. The careful scan of tone. The question, spoken or not, of whether one’s voice fits.
In this context, code-switching is not a creative choice. It is affective labour. A requirement. A form of self-monitoring shaped by symbolic violence.
But creative labour can also hold resistance. Some writers include dialect and vernacular in their work. Musicians foreground local cadence. Theatre-makers move between registers with intention. What was once dismissed as unprofessional becomes poetic. In genres like hip-hop and grime, regional dialects are not limitations. They are the voice.
Some practitioners now advocate for accent inclusivity in professional settings, treating accent not as a problem to be corrected, but as material to be respected. This reflects a shift from containment to expansion.
This is the counterweight to symbolic violence. The idea that voice, in all its variation, is not a liability. It is a resource. It holds history. It holds culture. It expands creativity when it resists being neutralised.
Creative industries have reinforced voice hierarchies. But they also hold the tools to dismantle them.
Voice as Vulnerability and Resistance
TThroughout these discussions, voice emerges as a paradox. It is deeply vulnerable, and potentially transformative. On one side, voice is vulnerability because it is bound to identity. To speak in one’s natural accent is to reveal something personal. A place. A class. A rhythm. This exposure can be met with judgment. Or dismissal.
Many creatives describe feeling exposed by their voices. Aware that a single sentence can trigger a whole system of assumptions. The professional stakes make this exposure sharper. First impressions matter. A pitch meeting. A casting. An interview. A voice that does not sound right can unsettle the listener’s idea of competence (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023). This judgement operates quickly. Often unconsciously. The result is precarity. A sense that one’s acceptance is conditional. That to remain, one must keep adjusting.
This anticipatory stress is widespread. Research confirms that accent bias contributes to it. The Sutton Trust notes that the creative sector privileges those from upper-middle-class backgrounds, not only in access, but in language and tone (The Sutton Trust, 2024). For many, voice becomes a source of stress. What should connect becomes something to manage.
And yet, voice is also resistance. There is power in speaking as you are. There is power in refusing to adjust. In saying, this is how I sound. For some, this is a choice rooted in integrity. For others, it is political.
In Bourdieu’s terms, insisting on one’s voice is a refusal of symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1991). It is a decision not to erase oneself to belong. Artists have long used this refusal as material. Refusing to code-switch. Refusing to flatten. Choosing instead to hold presence as-is. A kind of stillness. A cultural position.
Other creatives resist more quietly. A marketing executive stops softening her accent in meetings. An actor turns down a role that asks him to sound less like himself. These are not only personal choices. They are cultural shifts. Small refusals that ripple.
Some institutions are beginning to listen. Awareness campaigns now name accent bias as an inclusion issue, alongside race, gender, and disability (Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK, 2023). Reports increasingly recognise that regional and working-class voices have long been underrepresented and undervalued. Slowly, those voices are being revalued. A Liverpool accent. A Brummie lilt. A bilingual rhythm. A voice that signals place.
This shift is not only institutional. For the speaker, using their real voice can offer relief. Integrity. Even joy. Dropping the mask allows others to do the same. It becomes a gesture of solidarity. A way to build cultural connection through sound.
Over time, exposure changes what is heard. Hearing a range of voices normalises what was once exceptional. It begins to soften bias. It reconditions the ear.
To speak as oneself, and to be heard without translation, is an act of resistance. It is how creative space begins to shift. From exclusion to resonance.
Conclusion
In exploring code-switching and accent bias within the creative industries, a more layered picture comes into view. There is symbolic violence. There is fragmentation. There is emotional cost. We see how norms enforce themselves without needing to be named. We see how people split to fit. We see how affect, shame, pride, vigilance, lives inside the voice. And how voice, in turn, is shaped by the spaces that claim to value it.
But there is also resistance. Naming the dynamic is already a beginning. Reports, testimony, artwork. These are forms of refusal. They reveal how industry norms have been quietly sustained, and how they might begin to be dismantled.
Drawing on Bourdieu, we can locate accent bias not as a stylistic concern but as a form of symbolic exclusion (Bourdieu, 1991). It reinforces hierarchies under the guise of taste. Voice becomes a form of cultural capital. The more it aligns with dominant class expectations, the more it is recognised. The further it drifts, the more it is asked to adapt.
Voice is vulnerable. It can be policed. Mocked. Suppressed. But it is also a site of power. Through voice, one asserts place. One tells a story. One resists. In creative work, this matters. These are fields built on expression. And yet, the voices that carry the most cultural memory are often asked to adjust the most.
Still, the creative field holds potential for change. If it has enforced norms, it can also unmake them. Through casting. Through funding. Through the language of the room. Belonging should not require self-erasure. A creative space should be one where multiple voices sound together. Where no voice must translate itself to be understood.
This reflection is not separate from design. The dissonance between practice and theory is itself a form of symbolic tension. In many creative programmes, students are asked to centre themselves in their making, while being asked to step back in their analysis. This split mirrors the dynamics explored here , the pressure to perform a voice, while being instructed to detach from it.
Reclaiming voice, then, is not only personal. It is epistemological. A shift in how knowledge is embodied, shared, and legitimised. It is an act of design. One that begins in listening.
References
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power (J. B. Thompson, Ed.; G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Creative Access & FleishmanHillard UK. (2023). The language of discrimination: Class barriers and accent bias in the creative industries. Creative Access.
Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. London: Routledge.
Piller, I. (2016). Linguistic diversity and social justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Sutton Trust. (2024). A class act? Social mobility and the creative industries. London: The Sutton Trust.
