(General Paper 1 Question 17) of the practice/past All Souls Entrance Exam.
An accent is an acquired/learned behaviour which identifies you with a geographic region and/or social class. Different accents exist because of the clustering of social interactions between the same set of individuals and lack of interactions with everyone else. As the social group becomes more isolated accents become dialects which become different languages in a way analogous to the emergence of new species from divergent populations in biology. If an individual leaves this social group and joins a different one their accent will gradually change and morph into that of their new social group as a part of assimilation into that new social group. An individual can choose to hasten or retard their assimilation by deliberately trying to adopt the new practices and accent of their new social group or maintaining their old practices and accent. Thus the question of whether it is wrong to change your accent is really a question of whether it is wrong to try to assimilate into a different social group than the one you were born into.
In many circumstances some assimilation is beneficial for all involved: a new immigrant will be less socially isolated and have more opportunities to work if they can be understood by the existing populace and their adopted country benefits from their increased productivity. Othertimes it is less clear: does a working class person who has climbed into the aristocracy gain by assimilating to their social tendencies?
Assimilation is closely tied to how people choose to identify themselves. Identity is fundamentally a subjective experience. Each individual identifies with different social groups and ideas based on their own philosophy and personal experience. Their identity can be expressed through their clothes, the sports teams they follow, events they attend, political affiliations and their accent (and many other ways). Changing one's accent is just another way for them to express a change in their identity only differring from changing ones clothing in the amount of effort required to do it. How one identifies themselves changes through time as they are exposed to new ideas and accumulate experiences. Furthermore identity is not singular, everyone identifies themselves with a range of different groups in different contexts. For instance, one can identify simultaneously as a Chelsea supporter but also as a young professional, a ginger, a heterosexual man, a father, a social liberal, an economic conservative, a vegan, a Buddist, etc...
So no, it is not wrong to change your accent anymore than it is wrong to change your politicial, religious or cultural affiliations.
