Received Pronunciation

 

Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language which has been long perceived as uniquely prestigious amongst British accents.

The earlier mentions of the term can be found in H. C. Wyld's A Short History of English (1914) and in Daniel Jones's An Outline of English Phonetics, although the latter stated that he only used the term "for want of a better".^[1] According to Fowler's Modern English Usage (1965), the term is "the Received Pronunciation". The word received conveys its original meaning of accepted or approved — as in "received wisdom".^[2]

Received Pronunciation may be referred to as the Queen's (or King's) English, on the grounds that it is spoken by the monarch. It is also sometimes referred to as BBC English, because it was traditionally used by the BBC, yet nowadays this is slightly misleading. Queen Elizabeth II uses a specific form of English, and the BBC is no longer restricted to one type of accent, nor is "Oxbridge" (the universities of Oxford and Cambridge).

The RP is a form of pronunciation, not a dialect (a form of vocabulary and grammar). It may show a great deal about the social and educational background of a person who uses English. A person using the RP will typically speak Standard English although the reverse is not necessarily true.

In recent decades, many people have asserted the value of other regional and class accents, and many members (particularly young ones) of the groups that traditionally used Received Pronunciation have used it less, to varying degrees. Many regional accents are now heard on the BBC.

RP is often believed to be based on Southern accents, but in fact it has most in common with the dialects of the south-east Midlands: Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire.^[3] Migration to London in the 14th and 15th centuries was mostly from the counties directly north of London rather than those directly south. There are differences both within and among the three counties mentioned, but a conglomeration emerged in London, and also mixed with some elements of Essex and Middlesex speech. By the end of the 15th century, Standard English was established in the City of London.^[4]

Usage

Today, overall, RP has three different forms: Conservative RP, Mainstream RP and Contemporary (or Advanced) RP.

Conservative RP refers to a traditional accent which is associated with older speakers and the aristocracy. This is sometimes known as "High British". RP is not the accent of any particular locality, yet it is closer to the native accent of some counties than others. A strong RP accent usually indicates someone who went to a public school.

Mainstream RP is an accent that is often considered neutral regarding age, occupation or lifestyle of the speaker, whilst Contemporary RP refers to speakers using features typical of younger-generation speakers. However, these days, there is almost no difference between those two.

The modern style of RP is the usual accent taught to non-native speakers learning British English. Non-RP Britons abroad may modify their pronunciation to something closer to Received Pronunciation, in order to be understood better by people who themselves learned RP in school. They may also modify their vocabulary and grammar to be closer to Standard English, for the same reason. RP is used as the standard for English in most books on general phonology and phonetics and is represented in the pronunciation schemes of most dictionaries.

Change in time

Except in the last bastions of "real" RP use, the pronunciation has in fact changed over time. For instance, foreigners learning their English accents from Royal speeches would find they are looked at very strangely in the streets of Britain, because the Queen's "speech voice" has changed little since the 1950s, and now sounds archaic even to most people who would consider that they speak "correctly" (i.e. RP).

The change in RP may even be observed in the home of "BBC English". The BBC accent from the 1950s was distinctly different from today's: a news report from the '50s is instantly recognisable as such, and a mock-1950s BBC voice is often used for comic effect in TV or radio programmes wishing to satirize outdated social attitudes such as the Harry Enfield Show and its "Mr Chomondley-Warner" sketches.

Changing status of Received Pronunciation

Traditional status

Traditionally, Received Pronunciation is the accent of English which is "the everyday speech of families of Southern English persons whose menfolk have been educated at the great public boarding schools" (Daniel Jones, English Pronouncing Dictionary, 1926—he had earlier called it "Public School Pronunciation"), and which conveys no information about that speaker's region of origin prior to attending the school.

It is the business of educated people to speak so that no-one may be able to tell in what county their childhood was passed.

A. Burrell, Recitation. A Handbook for Teachers in Public Elementary School, 1891.

For many years, the use of Received Pronunciation was considered to be a trait of education. It was a standard practice until around the 1950s for university students with regional accents to modify their speech to be closer to RP.^{[citation needed]} As a result, at a time when only around five percent of the population attended universities, elitist notions sprang up around it and those who used it may have considered those who did not to be less educated than themselves. Historically the most prestigious British educational institutions (Oxford, Cambridge, many public schools) were located in England, so those who were educated there would pick up the accents of their peers. (There have always been exceptions: for example, Morningside, Edinburgh and Kelvinside in Glasgow had Scottish "pan loaf" accents aspiring to a similar prestige.)

Changing attitudes

From the 1970s onwards, attitudes towards Received Pronunciation have been slowly changing. One of the primary catalysts for this was the influence in the 1960s of Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.^{[citation needed]} Unusually for a recent prime minister, he spoke with a strong regional Yorkshire accent, exaggerated, some said, to appeal to the working classes his party represented.

As a result of the trend begun by Wilson and others during the 1960s, the accents of the English regions and of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland are today more likely to be considered to be on a par with Received Pronunciation. BBC reporters no longer need to, and often do not, use Received Pronunciation, which in some contexts may sound out of place, and be discouraged in favour of less "cultivated" accents.

Phonology

Consonants

A table containing the consonant phonemes is given below

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Labio- velar	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p  b				t  d			k  g
Affricate						tʃ  dʒ
Nasal	m				n			ŋ
Fricative		f  v		θ  ð	s  z	ʃ  ʒ			h
Approximant			w		ɹ		j
Lateral approximant					l

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Received Pronunciation are shown in the following tables:

Short Monophthongs

	Front	Central	Back
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Mid		ə
Open-mid	ɛ
Open	æ	ʌ	ɒ

Examples: /ɪ/ in kit and mirror, /ʊ/ in foot and put, /ɛ/ in dress and merry, /ʌ/ in strut and curry, /æ/ in trap and marry, /ɒ/ in lot and orange, /ə/ in the first syllable of ago and in the second of sofa.

Long Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː		uː
Open-mid		ɜː	ɔː
Open			ɑː

Examples: /iː/ in fleece, /uː/ in goose, /ɜː/ in nurse and bird, /ɔː/ in north and thought, /ɑː/ in father and start.

RP's long vowels are slightly diphthongised. Especially the vowels /iː/ and /uː/ which are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs [ɪj] and [ʊw].

Although these vowels are traditionally described as long vowels, whereby they have received the <ː> mark after their symbol, the length also varies according to the surrounding sounds. If a long vowel is preceded by a voiceless consonant sound (e.g. /p k s/) its length will be equivalent to that of the short vowels, with the exception of /ɑː/ which becomes halfway between long and short. e.g. Burt = [bɜt], seat = [sit], garth = [gɑˑθ].

The short vowel /æ/ becomes longer if it is followed by a voiced consonant sound. Thus, in narrow transcription bat = [bæt] and bad = [bæːd]. In natural speech, the plosives /t/ and /d/ may be unreleased utterance-finally, thus distinction between these words would rest mostly on vowel length.^[5]

Diphthongs

	Second component close front	Second component close back	Second component central
First component close front			ɪə
First component is mid-open front	eɪ		ɛə
First component is mid-central		əʊ
First component is open	aɪ	aʊ
First component is back and rounded	ɔɪ		ʊə

Examples: /ɪə/ in near and theatre, /eɪ/ in face, /ɛə/ in square and Mary, /əʊ/ in goat, /aɪ/ in price, /aʊ/ in mouth, /ɔɪ/ in choice, /ʊə/ in tour.

The off-glide of /eɪ/ (and also the off-glides of /ij/ and /uw/) can be predicted by a phonological rule and so are not represented in some underlying representations.

There are also the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in fire and /aʊə/ as in tower. The realizations sketched in the following table are not phonemically distinctive, though the difference between /aʊə/ /ɑɪə/ and /ɑ:/ may be neutralised under [ɑ:] or [ä:]

Triphthongs^[5]

As two syllables:	Tripthong:	Loss of mid-element:	Further simplified as:
[aɪ.ə]	[aɪə]	[a:ə]	[a:]
[ɑʊ.ə]	[ɑʊə]	[ɑ:ə]	[ɑ:]

Not all reference sources use the same system of transcription. In particular

• /æ/ as in trap is often written /a/.
• /e/ as in dress is often written /ɛ/.
• /ɜː/ as in nurse is sometimes written /əː/.
• /aɪ/ as in price is sometimes written /ʌɪ/.
• /aʊ/ as in mouse is sometimes written /ɑʊ/
• /ɛə/ as in square is sometimes written /eə/, and is also sometimes treated as a long monophthong /ɛː/.

Most of these variants are used in the transcription devised by Clive Upton for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) and now used in many other Oxford University Press dictionaries.

Characteristics

• Unlike most forms of English English and American English, RP is a broad A accent, so words like bath and chance appear with /ɑː/ and not /æ/.
• RP is a non-rhotic accent, meaning /r/ does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel.
• Like other accents of southern England, RP has undergone the wine-whine merger so the phoneme /ʍ/ is not present except among those who have acquired this distinction as the result of speech training. R.A.D.A. (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), based in London, still teaches these two sounds as distinct phonemes.
• RP uses [ɫ], called dark l, when /l/ occurs at the end of a syllable, as in well, and also for syllabic l, like in little or apple. (whereas it has been reported^[6] that "General American" speakers use the /ɫ/ both finally and initially.)
• Unlike many other varieties of English English, there is no h-dropping in words like head or herb.
• RP does not have yod dropping after /n/, /t/ and /d/. Hence, for example, new, tune and dune are pronounced /njuː/, /tjuːn/ and /djuːn/ rather than /nuː/, /tuːn/ and /duːn/. This contrasts with many East Anglian and East Midland varieties of English English and with many forms of American English.
• The /t/ has a strong aspiration ([tʰ]) in word-initial and word-final positions. In word-medial positions, the aspiration is weakened, and may be lost altogether ([t]). The unaspirated variant may be misunderstood as /d/ in an American speaker.^[6]
• The flapped variant of /t/, /d/ (as in much of the West Country and the Cape Coloured dialect of South Africa) is not used. In traditional RP [ɾ] is an allophone of /r/ (used only intervocalically). ^[6]
• The /t/ phoneme in words like bluntness is often realised as a glottal stop ( [blʌnʔnəs] ). ^[5]
• The [ʔ] allophone of /t/ (common in Cockney) is not used in words like butter. ^[5]

Historical variation

The form of RP has itself changed over the past decades. Sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was standard to pronounce the /æ/ sound, as in land, with a vowel close to [ɛ], so that land could sound similar to lend. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even the Queen has changed her pronunciation over the past 50 years, no longer using an [ɛ]-like vowel in words like land.^{[citation needed]} (It is partly because of this change that Upton's system uses the symbol /a/ for this phoneme.)

Before World War II, the vowel in words like putt and sun was an open-mid back unrounded vowel; this sound has since shifted to [ɐ], a near-open central vowel. The symbol <ʌ> is still used, possibly because of tradition or the fact that some speakers retain the older pronunciation.

Some old-fashioned forms of RP, still occasionally heard from older speakers, have other variations in their phonology.

• Words like off, cloth, gone are pronounced with /ɔː/ instead of /ɒ/. See lot-cloth split.
• The horse-hoarse merger does not occur, with an extra diphthong /ɔə/ appearing in words such as hoarse, force, pour.

See also

• Accent (linguistics)
• Prestige dialect
• English English
• Estuary English
• General American
• Prescription and description
• Cockney

References

External links

• Sounds Familiar? — Listen to examples of received pronunciation on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website
• Whatever happened to Received Pronunciation? - An article by the phonetician J. C. Wells about received pronunciation

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