LELA 10082 Lecture 2

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 at http//www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/
  rphappened.htm

2
Received pronunciation

• Standard (British) English pronunciation
• Its 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 Queens 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
• /o?/ ? /??/ eg goat, road, dont, know
• /?/ ? /a/ eg that bad man
• Loss of tapped /r/ (alveolar tap ?) as a usual
  realization of /r/ between vowels, as in very
  sorry replaced by the ordinary approximant ?.
• 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
• /?/ ?/?/ eg possible, private, carelessness, and
  other words ending in -ible, -ate, -less, -ness,
  -ity, -ily
• /tj, dj/ ? /tS, dZ/ nature, graduate,
  perpetual, Tuesday, tune, dune
• /E/ ? /?/ ?/i/ in -y ending, happy, city,

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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?/, mincemints
• 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)

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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
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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
  its an L
• Prescriptivists talk (often disparagingly) in
  terms of vocalised L
• But endocentric analysis would say its 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

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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?/ ?æ?,
  /eI/ ? ??
• Rising intonation on statements

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Estuary English and Cockney

• Some features of Cockney appearing in EE too
• replacement of /?, 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!

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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
  Queens Christmas speeches and found that even
  the Queens 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)