2 - From RP to General British Flashcards
The birth of RP
End of 19th century & beginning of 20th century, something remarkable: people at the top of society began to adopt pronunciations typical of the upper classes in the London area
- The emerging pronunciation came to be known as Received Pronunciation: based on the higher classes of the South-East of England yet defined by the ‘absence of local or regional features’ (a non-regional accent)
RP and prestige
- Hierarchy: very important
- A small country like Britain could only control a world empire through a strict hierarchy of power and authority. With the Crown and the London Court at the top (the King’s English, the Queen’s English)
- At no point of the history of RP did more than 3-5% of the population speak RP
- 20th century: mass communication and culture this acted in the favour of RP → for fifty years RP became synonymous with BBC English
RP and non-native learners of English
Outside the UK, RP became the model that learners of English were exposed to. Sometimes the only model.
- Even today, one of the main two models with General American, depending on the country / region of the world.
- A huge market! Strong economic interests.
- A sad – but real – view: variation is ‘noise’, it ’s pollution.
- At the same time, it’s very useful for comprehension.
The gradual decline of RP
After WW2: social change, more equality between genders and classes, better education
→ it became possible for non-RP speakers to have access to prestigious jobs.
→ Regional accents have been increasingly back on the BBC since then.
- Towards the end of the 20th century RP even began to be perceived as negative → Speaker sound educated & intelligent BUT haughty, snobbish & unfriendly
Throughout its life, RP changed / has changed, like all other accents and varieties of
English
The gradual decline of RP
After WW2: social change, more equality between genders and classes, better education
→ it became possible for non-RP speakers to have access to prestigious jobs.
→ Regional accents have been increasingly back on the BBC since then.
- Towards the end of the 20th century RP even began to be perceived as negative → Speaker sound educated & intelligent BUT haughty, snobbish & unfriendly
Throughout its life, RP changed / has changed, like all other accents and varieties of
English
What does RP refer to?
Daniel Jones’s definition (1918):
Most usually heard in everyday speech in the fmailies of Southern English Persons whose menfolk have been educated at the great public boarding schools
VS Wells :
A convenient name for an accent which remains generally aceptable & intelligible within Britain
who gave the name “RP”
Alexander Ellis
What can you say about the name RP ?
- a rather discriminatory name
- other names:
- Southern British English (SBE)
- BBC English
- General British (Cruttenden 2014)
Varieties of RP Glimson
Glimson recognizes
* Conservative RP (used by older people)
* General Rp used by older people)
* Advanced RP (used by younger speakers
Varieties of RP Wells
Wells calls General RP : Mainstream RP
U-R.P : accent of the upper crust (= very posh people)
Adoptive R.P = accent of those who didn’t speak RP as children but ho have learnt it as adults
Near R.P = accent spoken by the people with midl regional characteristics
- We’ll focus on three sorts of RP
Conservative RP = very traditional variety particularly associated with older speakers and
the aristocracy
Mainstream RP = describes an accent that we might consider
extremely neutral in terms of signals regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker
Contemporary RP (that can be equated to General British) = refers to speakers using features typical of younger RP
speakers.
→ All, however, are united by the fact they do not use any pronunciation
patterns that allow us to make assumptions about where they are from in the UK.
