Accents - Received Pronunciation & Brummie

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Accent - Received Pronunciation

RP (received pronunciation) is the very posh sounding accent that is spoken by the Queen. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as being a 'standard accent' of Southern England.

Phonological features of RP

The phonological features of RP are defined by:
- 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’.

Ways of looking at RP (cont.)

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RP is outdated – only about 2% of the population use it.
RP is universally recognised – it is the most widely recognised ‘English’ by foreigners.

Accent - Theories About Received Pronunciation

RP (received pronunciation) is the very posh sounding accent that is spoken by the Queen. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as being a 'standard accent' of Southern England.

Giles

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'.

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.

Jonathan Harrington

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 Powesland

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.

Accent - Brummies

Brummies don’t have the most flattering qualities attributed to them. In a question about accent discrimination, Brummie is a perfect go-to example. Here are a few more studies you can use:

The University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen conducted a study of jokes, and they found that Brummie was often the funniest and RP was the unfunniest.

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

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.