Rp/bbc English as the British national standard of pronunciation

MAJOR ACCENTS IN THE UK. GENERAL AMERICAN AS

THE AMERICAN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION STANDARD

Points for discussion:

Major accents in the UK.

1. RP/BBC English as the British national standard of pronunciation:

1) Socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English.

2) Phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English.

2. Cockney as an example of a broad accent of English.

3. Estuary English.

4. Chief differences between RP and regional accents of British English.

General American as the American English pronunciation standard

5. Contemporary sociolinguistic situation in the USA.

6. General American phonological and phonetic description/discrimination:

1) Segmental differences:

a) systemic,

b) structural,

c) selectional,

d) realizational.

2) Prosodic differences:

a) word-stress patterns distribution,

b) differences in sentence/utterance-level stress,

c) intonation distictions.

3) Voice quality distinctions.

Required literature:

Lecture 2, Seminar 1

1. Паращук В.Ю. Теоретична фонетика англійської мови: Навчальний посібник для студентів факультетів іноземних мов. – Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2005. – pp. 71 – 100.

2. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка: Учеб. Для студ. ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. / М.А. Соколова, К.П. Гинтовт и др. – М.: ВЛАДОС, 1996. – С. 253-275.

Optional literature:

1. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. – 5^th ed. Revised by Alan Cruttenden. -Bristol: J W Arrowsmith Ltd, 1996. – P. 77-87.

2. Laver J. Principles of phonetics. – Cambridge: CUP, 1995. – pp. 55-65.

3. J.K. Chambers. Dialectology. – Cambridge: CUP, 1994. – pp. 5-9, 54-55.

MAJOR ACCENTS IN THE UK

RP/BBC ENGLISH AS THE BRITISH NATIONAL STANDARD OF PRONUNCIATION

□ Socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English.

The historical origins of RP go back to the 16^th-17^th century recommendations that the speech model should be that provided by the educated pronunciation of the court and the capital. Thus, the roots of RP are in London, more particularly the pronunciation of the London region and the Home counties lying around London within 60 miles: Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey. By the 18^th century a prestigious pronunciation model was characterized as the speech " received by the polite circles of society”. By the 19^th century London English had increasingly acquired social prestige losing some of its local characteristics. It was finally fixed as the pronunciation of the ruling class. In the mid 19^th century there was an increase in education, in particular, there occurred the rise of public schools (since 1864 Public School Act). These schools became important agencies in the transmission of Southern English as the form with highest prestige. Since that time London English or Southern English was termed as Classroom English, Public School English or Educated English.

At the beginning of the 20^th century Southern Educated English was a social, regionally-defined variety of more or less clearly definable social basis – rather a small group of people who had had public school education (Oxford, Cambridge). There was a forceful normalization movement towards the establishment of Educated Southern English as the STANDARD ACCENT. The major motifs of this were: 1) the need for a clearly defined and recognized norm for public and other purposes; 2) the desire to provide adequate descriptions for teaching English both as the mother tongue and a foreign language.

Professor Daniel Jones described this variety as a hoped-for standard pronunciation in the first editions of his books "The Pronunciation of English!'' [1909] and "Outline of English Phonetics" [1917]. By 1930 the term "Standard Pronunciation" was replaced by "Received Pronunciation", which had been introduced by phonetician Ida Ward who defined it as pronunciation which " had lost all easily noticeable local differences. "

Thus, in the early 20^th century the consolidation of Educated Southern English (RP) as a model took place, though variations according to style, age and idiolect were observable in it. The British Broadcasting Corporation (the BBC) adopted RP for the use by its news-readers since 1920s. The country's population, for more than half a century, had been exposed through broadcasting to RP. For that reason RP often became identified in the public mind with BBC English. Only over the last 30 years, both the BBC and other British national radio and TV channels have been increasingly tolerant of the accent of their broadcasters.

The second half of the 20^th century witnessed a vast extension in RP's social base. Due to the advent of radio and television which has led to a greater number of speakers in various layers of society using RP and access to higher education has led to a relaxation of view on prestige in pronunciation. This vast extension of RP's social base has resulted in a dilution of the original concept of RP in the last quarter of the 20th century which manifests itself in the admittance of variant pronunciations as of common and acceptable usage.

According to Prof. J.C. Wells, contemporary RP/BBC English does not constitute a single variety but a set of varieties correlating with the speakers' education, social status and other social factors: 1) Mainstream RP (the accent of middle class educated speakers); 2) U-RP (upper-crust, aristocratic RP); 3) Adoptive RP (the accent of the adults who did not speak RP as children); 4) Near-RP (the accent of the speakers preserving strong regional features).

Three main types of RP are distinguished by A. C. Gimson and A. Cruttenden:

1) General RP 2) Refined RP and 3) Regional RP.

General RP (=U-RP)reflects the pronunciation of middle class educated speakers. Refined RP is defined as an accent reflecting a class distinction associated with upper-class families, and the number of its speakers is declining. Its particular characteristics are the realization of/əυ/ as [ёυ] and a very open word-final /ə/ (and where [ə] forms part of /ıə/, /еə/, /υə/). The vowel /з:/ is pronounced very open in all positions, and /æ/ is often diphthongized as / εæ /.

Regional RP is basically RP except for the presence of a few regional characteristics which go unnoticed even by other speakers of RP, e.g. vocalization of dark [ł] to [υ] in words like held [heυd] and ball [boυ], a characteristic feature of Cockney (and some other regional accents) now passes virtually unnoticed in a fully RP accent.

Nowadays British phoneticians refer to an educated accent in London and the south­east which is termed Estuary English (EE) (англійська вимова в дельті Темзи). It is often characterized among younger speakers as being fashionable.

In fact, the term RP has become imprecise due to its recent extensively permissive attitude to pronunciation variants, the existence of varieties within it, but it still has wide currency in books on contemporary English pronunciation. A lot of informative recent publications on RP can be found at Professor Wells's web-page: < http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells >

□ Phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English.

According to the phonotactic specification of /r/ occurrence, RP is a non-rhotic or r-less accent, i.e. /r/ does not occur after a vowel or at the end of the words, except for the cases of linking /r/.

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