Delving into Received Pronunciation: A Linguistic Exploration

1. LELA 10082Lecture 2 RP (Received pronunciation) See: J.C. Wells (1997) “Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation?”, II Jornadas de Estudios Ingleses, Universidad de Jaén, Spain, p.19-28. Available athttp://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/rphappened.htm

2. Received pronunciation • “Standard” (British) English pronunciation • It’s an accent rather than a dialect • “received” in the old-fashioned meaning of “accepted” or “approved” (cf “received wisdom”) • Term probably coined by Daniel Jones (1917)

3. Received pronunciation • Regarded as most prestigious accent, identified with education and “breeding” • Also known (misleadingly) as “Queen’s English”, or Oxbridge English, or (least appropriately nowadays) BBC English • In fact, one can identify a range of variants of RP

4. Received pronunciation • Unlike prestige accents in many other countries it is not the accent of any particular region … • … though historically it originates in the speech of the upper classes in London and the home counties • It obviously has more features in common with southern accents … • … but it is clearly not the local accent of London, nor Oxford or Cambridge

5. Prestigious accent? • Generally the model for BrE pronunciation • Foreign learners usually taught either AmE or RP (though both Edinburgh and Dublin have a big English-language learning tourist trade) • Used to be necessary for many professions (notably, the BBC) – children had elocution lessons • Associated with upper classes, hence aloofness and snobbery, and so has become less attractive (roughly since 1960s, perhaps in association with other social changes) • Now estimated that only 3-5% of population of England speaks RP • Still used as a model to describe variation of non-standard accents

6. How to define RP • Sociolinguistically? • Who speaks RP? Members of a certain social class (Royal family, upper-middle classes...); broadcasters (not any more); educated people (but many people now have “educated regional accents”) • Subjectively? • What is correct/preferred/easiest to understand/most neutral? Always a subjective question, and no longer very reliable; in fact RP is widely denigrated nowadays • As an ideal, e.g. a model for teaching EFL

7. Variation within RP • Like all languages/dialects/accents, RP has undergone (and is undergoing) changes • We can identify variants (“conservative”, “standard”, “modern”) in relation to resistance to certain developments: • Variation includes • Phoneme mergers • Phoneme/allophone realisation • Phoneme distribution • Other features

8. Phonemes • Groups of speech sounds identified by speakers as “the same”, often reflected in writing system • Phonetic realisation varies depending on context • Clear and dark L • Varieties of /t/ in top, stop, try, eighth, little, bitten, cat • Use of minimal pairs to identify phonemes • Also, requirement of phonetic similarity (e.g. /h/~/N/)

9. Phoneme mergers • Phoneme distinction lost, so words become homophones • /w/ ~ // eg witch ~ which • // a phoneme in Scottish, Irish and American English • Arguably a sequence of /hw/ (not /wh/, note) • Regarded as a feature of “careful” speech • Distinction not made by many RP speakers • // ~ // eg floor ~ flaw, four ~ for • // ~ // eg poor ~ paw, sure, moor, cure, tourist

10. Phoneme/allophone realisation • Phoneme remains, but its realisation changes • Allophone shift • Allophone falls out of use • /oʊ/ → /əʊ/ eg goat, road, don’t, know • // → /a/ eg that bad man • Loss of tapped /r/ (alveolar tap [ɾ]) as a usual realization of /r/ between vowels, as in verysorry; replaced by the ordinary approximant [ɹ]. • Glottal stop for /t/ before consonant as in football, witness, network, quite good, Gatwick, and even word-finally before a vowel: take it off, quite easy.

11. Phoneme distribution • Different phoneme is used in pronunciation of certain words • Can be systematic, or apply apparently arbitrarily • // → // in cloth, off, lost [before voiceless fricative] • /ɪ/ →/ə/ eg possible, private, carelessness, and other words ending in -ible, -ate, -less, -ness, -ity, -ily • /t+j, d+j/ → /tS, dZ/ nature, graduate, perpetual, Tuesday, tune, dune • /E/ → /ɪ/ →/i/ in -y ending, happy, city, …

12. Other effects • Linking vs. intrusive r • fear of, idea of, put a comma in, saw it … • Plosive epenthesis: insertion of /t/ between nasal and fricative: fence /fEnts/, emphasis /EmpfasIs/, answer /Ants/, mince=mints • Vocalisation of dark L /l/ → //: milk, shelf, tables, apple, middle, little • Is this a change in phoneme distribution or change in allophone realisation? (see later)

13. Lexical changes • Individual changes in lexical pronunciation, not generalisable • nephew /nEvju/ → /nEfju/ • suit /sjut/ → /sut/ • deity /diItI/ → /deItI/ • zebra /zibr/ → /zEbr/ • Collected by Wells (1990) for his Longman Pronunciation Dicitonary • Comparison of preferences by respondents’ ages shows time-line of change born before … 1923 1962 nEfju 51% 92% sut 47% 92% deItI 40% 98% zEbr 65% 96%

14. How to describe? • Note difficulty in describing changes (will also be seen when we look at regional accents) • Ordinary phonemic analysis (endocentric) • Comparison with something else (exocentric) • Example: vocalisation of dark L • Odd to say [U] is allophone of /l/ as it is (elsewhere) a phoneme in its own right • Historical view, backed by spelling, suggests it’s “an L” • Prescriptivists talk (often disparagingly) in terms of “vocalised L” • But endocentric analysis would say it’s a /U/

15. Estuary English • The new RP? Actually a hybrid of RP and SE English (London, Kent, Essex) accents • Not associated with upper class, but with socially mobile young people, even working class, hence prestigious in modern society • Expected to replace RP as “standard” • Name coined by David Rosewarne in Times Higher Ed. Supp. 1984 • Excellent website: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/home.htm

16. Features of Estuary English • Features of advanced RP already seen: • Use of intrusive R. • T glottalisation • L vocalisation • “Broad A” ([A]) in words such as bath, grass, laugh, etc. has only spread to rural areas of the south-east in the last 40 years. • Dropping of /j/ phoneme after /t,d,n/ in tune, news, knew • Dropping of /t/ in twenty, plenty etc. • Diphthong shifts, e.g., /aI/ → [AI], /a/ →[æʊ], /eI/ → [] • Rising intonation on statements

17. Estuary English and Cockney • Some features of Cockney appearing in EE too: • replacement of /θ, ð/ with /f, v/ (e.g. [fINk] for think [wEv] for weather, free = three) • Pronunciation of -ing: RP /IN/, elsewhere /INg/, EE (and some conservative RP) /In/, and as /INk/ in -thing • dropping /h/ in stressed words (e.g. [aus] for house) • Replacement of an /r/ with [] (eg Jonathan Ross) sufficiently widespread to be no longer seen as a speech defect!

18. Conclusion • All accents change, even RP • Interesting that it is possible to track changes by listening to recordings • Researchers at Macquarie U (Sydney) compared the Queen’s Christmas speeches and found that even the Queen’s English is moving towards EE! • Also interesting to see how popular press talks about language change

19. Conclusion • RP was once highly prestigious – if you had a regional accent you strove to lose it • On the contrary, it is now a stigmatised accent • This says more about social trends than about linguistics • Numbers of speakers diminishing, so the accent may disappear • Regional accents now more acceptable, but there are still strata • e.g. “Educated Northern” • Regional accents are associated with character traits, also subject to change • In 60s, Scouse was witty, cheeky (now Geordie); Cockney indicated a spiv; Lancs/Yorks hard-working hard-nosed businessman • Attitudes quite different beyond England (sic)