Historically, there has been less research carried out on earwitness than
eyewitness testimony. However, in some cases, earwitness evidence might play an
important role in securing a conviction. This paper focuses on accent which is a
central characteristic of voices in a forensic linguistic context. The paper
focuses on two experiments (Experiment 1,n= 41; Experiment 2,n= 57) carried out with participants from a wide range of
various locations around the United Kingdom to rate the accuracy and confidence
in recognizing accents from voices from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern
Ireland, and Ireland as well as looking at specificity of answers given and how
this varies for these regions. Our findings show that accuracy is variable and
that participants are more likely to be accurate when using vaguer descriptions
(such as “Scottish”) than being more specific. Furthermore, although
participants lack the meta-linguistic ability to describe the features of
accents, they are able to name particular words and pronunciations which helped
them make their decision.