Christopher Shea flags some studies rubbishing the supposed advantages of British English over its American equivalent:
The main significant effect found in this study was that people who'd lived at least three months outside the US rated the English accent significantly lower than people who'd only lived in the US. In fact, Americans who had not lived abroad considered the English-accented person to be much more intelligent than themselves, but the people who had lived abroad rated the standard American accent more intelligent than the standard English one. My preferred way of interpreting this (a bit tongue-in-cheek) is that Americans are happy to rate the English as more intelligent than themselves up until they actually start meeting and talking to the English.
Couldn't agree more. The accent is a curse in some ways. I remember my first months in Harvard classrooms, gob-smacked by how my contributions, however lame, were invariably treated with respect because my accent framed them. I never consciously tried to retain it; it just surrendered slowly vowel by vowel. But I did feel relieved at having this burden of faux-erudition lifted.
The Dish 