Accents Flashcards
RP (received pronunciation)
The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as being a ‘standard accent’ of Southern England.
Spoken by the King
Accents - Giles’ Matched Guise Experiment
Giles’ research details that RP (received pronunciation) was seen as the most intelligent and prestigious, whereas regional accents were seen as friendlier or more honest.
Ranked bottom for intelligence was the Brummie accent.
Phonological features of RP
- Use of the trap/bath split – the long a (/a:/) in words like ‘bath’.
- H-retention – /h/ is always pronounced in initial positioning in words like ‘house’.
- Non-rhoticity – Not pronouncing the /r/ at the end of words like ‘mother’.
- Conservative vowels – sounds like they ‘ought to’.
- Yod-coalescence – includes the /j/ (pronouned ‘y’) sound in words like ‘rain’, ‘Spain’ and ‘Tuesday’.
Shibboleths
We call these features shibboleths which means they are a feature of a group.
In this case, they are features of the RP accent.
Ways of looking at RP
- RP is prescriptivist (prescriptivism is all about there being right and wrong uses of English.
- Prescriptivists believe we should promote the right uses and shun the wrong uses) – it is associated with Standard English (SE).
- RP carries overt prestige (a very open form of status) – it has high status due to association with ‘The Establishment’ and is labelled ‘The Queen’s English
- RP is universally recognised – it is the most widely recognised ‘English’ by foreigners.
Ways of looking at RP (negaive)
- RP is an artificial construct – it doesn’t offer any clues about background (and so is regionless).
- RP is outdated – only about 2% of the population use it.
Who investigated Queen’s ENGLISH In Christmas speeches
Jonathan Harrington has investigated the Queen’s accent over 50 years of her Christmas speeches and believes that her accent has started to move towards a general Southern English accent.
This has been done via her interactions with people who don’t speak RP and a gradual reduction in her accent.
Case study: George Osbourne
- Whilst in his role as Chancellor, Osbourne was seen to drop his RP accent and use an accent closer to Estuary English (see section on Estuary) when speaking to workers.
- He used things like ‘kinda’ and ‘Briddish’ instead of ‘kind of’ and ‘British’.
- He was seen to be using his RP again in Parliament.
Giles and RP
- In Giles’ Capital Punishment experiment, five groups of students were given the same script (four oral and one written).
- All were spoken in a different accent: RP, Somerset, Welsh and Brummie.
- RP was rated highly in competency and reliability, but was rated low in persuasiveness and was seen as ‘posh and snobby’.
Giles and Powesland RP
- Giles and Powesland had a speaker who delivered a talk about psychology to two sets of students.
- One set had the talk performed with an RP accent and the other had the talk performed with a Brummie accent.
- The group voted the RP speaker as higher saying that the Brummie was less intelligent.
AC Gimson
- AC Gimson argued in 1962 that there were times that RP could be a decided disadvantage, especially in social situations where empathy and affection are needed.
- This is backed up by Linda Mugglestone who believes that RP’s prestige is on the wane.
Accent discrimination- Brummie. Worcester College
- Worcester College played participants clips from a police interview.
- Brummie suspects were significantly more likely to labelled as guilty. Participants labelled the Brummie accent as more likely to be poor and working class.
Peter Trudgill on accents
Peter Trudgill has investigated variations in relationship to show variations of in class and regional forms. The triangle shows that as social class decreases, regional variation increases.
The University of Aberdeen on accents
The University of Aberdeen conducted a study of jokes, and they found that Brummie was often the funniest and RP was the unfunniest.
One of the easiest ways to map dialectal variations
is to look at what names people give to things.
E.g. The bread in the picture can be called a bread roll, barm cake, bap, cob, roll, or bun.
