#George Russell's suspiciously middle class accent? 🤨📸

[blorbocedes]

cannot believe you have me searching for george russell videos but here we are my beloved. i need people to understand that gr is not a natural born tory, not in the way that alex and lando are. alex and lando were born to rich, bougie families. they both went to private school (lando actually went to the same school as the king of thailand, and his father is one of the uk's wealthiest people, that's how rich his family are) and it is clear in the way that they speak.

the uk is absolutely preoccupied with accent and class and the intersection of the two. the most 'acceptable' accent to have is received pronunciation, which is generally thought of as being the southern accent, but is more precisely the accent of wealthier, middle to upper class people from the home counties (the counties surrounding London), particularly the wealthier parts of London, Oxford, and Cambridge. think judi dench, vanessa kirby, stephen fry, joanna lumley, helen mirren for an accent reference.

neither alex nor lando are from these areas, lando is from Bristol and alex is from Suffolk, both of which have distinct accents of their own, but they both speak with a fairly RP accent because of their wealth, class, and education. alex's accent is 'better', it's more crisp, and captures the phonetic rhythm more accurately. it's also slightly more nasal at times than lando's form, but lando's so much whinier that his accent is always more snobbish than alex's.

george, on the other hand, is actually from the general RP area. he was raised in Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, so the pattern of his speech and the general way in which he forms sounds matches that of the RP accent. but if you listen to this, an interview taken when he was fourteen (his speaking starts at around the 40 second mark) you'll notice a big difference in the way that he talks to the way in which alex and lando speak. this is the point at which class comes in. now, while i'm pretty sure that george and his family are middle class, george's accent is 'common' enough to suggest that they're certainly not an upper middle class family (yes, there are layers upon layers to the british class system, yes it's stupid and terrible) and likely only lower middle class. this is also supported by the fact that george went to grammar school (a state funded school, but one that is selective and requires you to pass a test to get in) rather than a private school (there are many private schools in the area that george grew up in, and in general private schools care less if you miss lots of school for competitions etc because you're paying).

because accent is linked so much to class, and therefore access to education because the british school system is broken, having a RP accent is an instinctive indicator of wealth and intelligence. it's clear that george has put effort into his accent and ensuring that it is crisper, shortening some vowels and ensuring that he enunciates his consonants, but even so, if you listen to him here, you can still tell that he was raised and educated amidst the 'common people'. similarly, he's evidently put a lot of effort into dressing in a certain way to give the impression of wealth and sophistication. the accent, the clothes, the hobbies (see this photo of him playing croquet, this photo of him cycling in the ponciest way possible, and this photo of him cosplaying shooting at balmoral) are all carefully curated to give the impression of a man who is rich and well-educated from the upper echelons of british society. he's trying to seem like the motorsports version of hugh grant, but the accent betrays him ever so slightly.

this doesn't mean that he's not still a tory of course. he's obscenely wealthy, definitely a queen fucker, and has an almost baffling lack of charm that goes hand in hand with the belief that capitalism is a good thing and that liz truss is an acceptable choice to lead the country (we're definitely not a global laughing stock), but he's definitely not the same kind of tory as lando, though like you i don't think lando has ever voted in his life whereas george definitely had an orgasm the moment that he dropped his Conservative vote into the ballot box (we do still use actual bits of paper that you draw on with a pencil, isn't british democracy wonderful).

anon you are so out of this world in levels of scholarship. i felt like I was reading an academic paper I was nodding along, I was going why of course, yes, as if I have Any idea what differentiates a posh British accent from a common pleb 😭

this is truly... wow. you've convinced me I now believe GR is Not a trueborn posh boy silver spoon of Mayfair but is desperately trying to fit in by being the Most tory of all... something about George Trying intentionally to sound more upper class is so... George...and having a chip on his shoulder cause his peers are so effortlessly belonging to said class, like you Know lando has never thought about pronunciation once in his lifetime, he doesn't even know what the word means! or how Alex is so perfectly pleasant and well bred and his Friend but also everything that doesn't come to him with ease, that he has to carefully think about and project... I just know he saw David Beckham queuing 13 hours for the queen's ash box and if it lands him a knighthood George is gonna 🔫 Charles (prince not leclerc) himself so he can stand in line for 20 hours !!!

it feels only fitting to post this now that wet lettuce has outlived Liz Truss 🥬 lmaoooo but you're right... GR absolutely got a hard-on voting for the Conservative party... he has a little pin that says for queen and country... cheers 🥂🥂🍾

i actually love anons like this cause wow you know what You're talking about and I'm just here to make hehe joke . this is where I develop a parasocial relationship with my anons and wish you were my friend so I could spam about GR larping as a posh boy despite Being a millionaire in your dms (this is an open invite to slide) but thank you for this essay, I truly enjoyed reading it ahaha <3