I have an accent. You have an accent. We all have accents. Nobody “doesn’t have an accent,” although you often hear people claim they don’t because they speak a particularly privileged accent.
For some reason, I hear this asserted most often by people from America’s Pacific Northwest. Not sure what they’re teaching kids in school up in Ecotopia, but Oregonians and Washingtonians should know that they also speak a dialect and have an accent, just like all us Muggles.
True, in most languages there is often an accent or family of accents accepted as a “standard” for communication, but these are still accents. It’s a silly prejudice to think of one dialect as “just talking” and all the rest as accents, as silly as the prejudice that led many ancient cultures to name themselves The (Real/Genuine) People while everyone else were “the tribes.”
Just as silly as the prejudice that leads many today to honor a socially privileged style of literature as “literary” while all other styles are mere “genres.”
This sort of social signifier carries a lot of emotional weight. People are very touchy and defensive about their speaking styles, their writing styles, their cultural styles. Here’s a personal anecdote that shows how this can really make life unnecessarily difficult for everyone:
I’ve had to add a third option to my “Overheard Wit & Wisdom” series, because a bit of dialogue I heard the other day fits in neither of those categories, but still deserves passing on.