Mobility, contact and an accent norm: the case of Received Pronunciation

Anne Fabricius

Roskilde University

April 2004

Structure of the paper

First part:

a renewed sociolinguistics of RP

a renewed social class analysis

Second part:

changing forms of native RP

changing norms of construct RP

A renewed sociolinguistics

Construct RP (norms) versus native RP (forms)the systematic ambiguity?RP the domain of phoneticians? Not a vernacular?RP speakers not suitable as subjects?BUT Forms and norms change at different speeds; need to separate cRP and nRP

One example of norms:“that’s the thing, it is, singing in a choir is a very standardising thing and and in the case of X (college) it’s standardising to some vague notion of RP of fifty years ago I think, which is no doubt what our world service listeners want to hear, who knows (Male speaker recorded in Cambridge in 1997)

J. Milroy 2001

Received pronunciation: who ”receives” it and how long will it be ”received”

phonetic forms still exist

Social situation no longer the same as RP’s ’heyday’

RP still exists but does not exist: a paradox

Need two separate entities

Do social elites persist in the UK?

Cultural distinctions and nuances remain legion. Accents, houses, cars, schools, sports, food, fashion, drink, smoking, supermarkets, soap operas, holiday destinations, even training shoes: virtually everything in life is graded with subtle or unsubtle class tags attached…And underpinning these distinctions are fundamental differences in upbringing, education and occupations.

(Adonis and Pollard 1997:10)

The classless society…a clever ruse to discredit the notion of class divisions without actually denying their existence… The classless society is therefore not a society without classes, but … a meritocratic society providing means for people to advance by ability regardless of class origins.

(Adonis and Pollard 1997:14-15)

Educational segregation in the independent sector in UK from pre-school age…

Admissions to Cambridge

Year of Entry State School (%) Independent school (%)

2003 1,643 (55) 1,360 (45)

2002 1,672 (56) 1,340 (44)

2001 1,458 (53) 1,336 (47)

2000 1,458 (52) 1,336 (48)

1999 1,461 (53) 1,320 (47)

Savage 2000:Class Analysis and Social transformation

Economic inequality continues to segregate through education, plusClass cultures have been transformed; loss of working class independenceNew middle class modes of individualization come to the foreHorizontal versus vertical dimension emphasized, discourse of careerthe classless society/ the classless accent

Consonant:

London + Home Counties + Rest

Pause: London + Home Counties Rest

Vowel: London Home Counties

Rest

Is RP regionalising?: T-glottalling localised

Construct RP at the micro-level 1

I: um did your mother and father ever talk about um the way that you spoke as a child

R: yes… not so much me as the other two [younger siblings] cause the other two used to glottally stop all the time so they’d go ’wha’’ and my mother’d go ’what’ like this

Construct RP at the micro-level 2

R: there’s sort of a slight backlash going on at the moment, my mother says ’yer’ she says he’s twenty-three years old and it’s like "No, mother, ’year’" I: so you’re correcting herR: trying to sort of slightly bring this back down to not quite so much like 50’s BBC television presenters (…)

Attitudes to RP

Dialect in discourse attitude study

York 2002

3 secondary schools

Samples male/female, RP/regional, qualitative and quantitative data

Results: female RP speaker judged more positively than male RP speaker

Conclusions

Fruitful to split RP into native and construct RPLooking at a social group’s changing accent forms via language variation and change paradigmAnd changing norms expressed in conscious and near-conscious attitudesWhat constitutes an accent norm?

Appendix 1: samples

Male RP

Female RP

Male regional

Female regional

Results of Keyword analysis

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Tot

H 1 4 8 5 0 31 18 32 99

H 0 5 9 8 3 31 17 26 99

E 2 2 5 16 8 9 2 55 99

E 2 3 6 17 19 14 0 38 99

T 3 2 14 8 7 25 21 19 99

T 1 4 14 8 6 31 19 16 99

N 2 6 5 16 3 22 6 39 99

N 3 1 2 11 5 25 12 42 101

Keyword Categories1. nervous and not very confident

2. positive, confident and independent

3. boring and quiet

4. interesting, outgoing, chatty, bubbly, straightforward

5. average achiever, not very intelligent

6. intelligent, well-educated, well-spoken, ambitious

7. posh, snobby, spoilt

8. friendly, relaxed, trustworthy, pleasant