Plan
Introduction
Chapter 1. RP/BBC English as theBritish national standard of pronunciation
1.1 Socio-historical survey ofRP/BBC English
1.2 Phonological and phoneticdimensions of RP/BBC English
Chapter 2. British English as astandard of pronunciation in Great Britain
2.1 History
2.2 Dialects and accents
2.3 Regional
2.4 Standardization
Chapter 3. Cockney as an example ofa broad accent of British English
Chapter 4. Black British as one ofthe most widespread dialects in Great Britain
Chapter 5. Differences inpronunciation between British and American English
Chapter 6. Estuary English as oneof the dialects of British English
Chapter 7. Chief differencesbetween RP and regional accents of British English
Conclusions
Резюме
References
Introduction
Allthe sounds in all languages ​​are always in process of change. During those timeswhen people from different regions communicated with each other not often, itwas natural that the speech of all communities did not develop in one directionor at the same rate. Moreover, different parts of the country were subjected todifferent extreme influences, which were the reasons for different phoneticstructures of the language. Especially, for the last five centuries, in GreatBritain has existed the notion that one kind of pronunciation of English ispreferable socially to others. One regional accent began to acquire socialprestige. For reasons of politics, commerce and the presence of the Court, itwas the pronunciation of the south-east of England and more particularly tothat of the London Region, that this prestige was attached. This pronunciationis called Received Pronunciation which is regarded as a model for correctpronunciation, particularly for educated formal speech.
Itis to be noticed that the role of RP in the English-speaking world has changedvery considerably in the last century. Over 300 million people now speakEnglish as their first language and of this number native RP speakers form onlya minute proportion. George Bernard Shaw said that the United States and UnitedKingdom are "two countries divided by a common language" [14].
Manyscientists, such as D. Jones, J.C. Wells, J. Gimson, S. Johnson, S. Jeffries,J. Maidment, D considered RP/BBC to be an important issue to pay theirattention to. Theobject of this research is RP as a norm of pronunciation of British English andits accents and dialects. Thesubject of the research is devoted to the peculiarities of the development ofRP from D. Jones to Wells.
Thepractical value of the research consists in providing different approaches tothe problem of RP in Modern English. Thematerial which was used to supply this research with examples is the following:George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (film "My fair lady"), Linton Kwesi Johnson's poem"Sonny's Lettah" and the BBC news.This turn paper consists of the introductory, sevenchapters, conclusion, summary and the list of used literature.
Sevenchapters are:
1.RP/BBC English as the British nationalstandard of pronunciation
2.British English as a standard ofpronunciation in Great Britain
3.Cockney as an example of a broad accentof British English
4.Black British as one of the mostwidespread dialects in Great Britain
5.Differences in pronunciation betweenBritish and American English
6.Estuary English as one of the dialectsof British English
7.Chief differences between RP andregional accents of British English
Chapter 1. RP/BBC English as the British national standard ofpronunciation
1.1 Socio-historical survey of RP/BBC English
Gimson claims that the historical origins of RP go back to the16 th -17 th century recommendations that thespeech model should be that provided by the educated pronunciation of the courtand the capital [Gimson 1980]. Thus, the roots of RP in London, moreparticularly the pronunciation of the London region and the Home countrieslying around London within 60 miles: Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey. By the 18 th century a prestigious pronunciation model was characterized as the speech "receivedby the polite circles of society "[Gimson: 1977].
By the 19 th century London English had increasingly acquiredsocial prestige losing be of its local characteristics. It was finally fixed asthe pronunciation of the ruling class. According to Leither, in the mid 19 th century there was an increase in education, in particular, there occurred therise of public schools (since 1864 Public School Act). These schools became important agencies in the transmission of Southern English as the form with highestprestige. Since that time London English or Southern English was termedas Classroom English, Public School English or Educated English [Liether: 1982]. That was a forcefulnormalization movement towards the establishment of Educated Southern Englishas the standard accent. The major reasons for this were:
1)The need for a clearlydefined and recognized norm for publicand other purposes;
2)The desire to provideadequate descriptions for teaching English both as the mother tongue and aforeign language.
Professor Daniel Jones described this variety as a hoped-forstandard pronunciation in the first editions of his books "ThePronunciation of English "[1909] and" Outline of EnglishPhonetics " [1917]. By 1930, however, any intention of setting up astandard of Spoken English was disclaimed by many phoneticians. The term"Standard Pronunciation" was replaced by "ReceivedPronunciation ", which had been introduced for Southern Educated English byphonetician Ida Ward who defined it as pronunciation which "had lost alleasily noticeable local differences "[Leitner: 1982]. According to Wells theBritish 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 exposedthrough broadcasting to RP. Until the early 70s of the last century it was theonly accent demanded in the BBC's announcers. For that reason RP often becameidentified in the public mind with BBC English. Only over the last 30 years, boththe BBC and other British national radio and TV channels have been increasinglytolerant of the accent of their broadcasters. [Wells: 1982].
1.2 Phonological and phonetic dimensions of RP/BBC English
Now we will outline main segmental features of RP/BBC English.
As for its phoneme inventory, Gimson states, that this accent has 20vowels and 24 consonants. The system of vowels embraces 12 pure vowels ormonophthongs: i:, i, Г¦, О›, a:, o, o:, П…, u:, з:, У™ and 8 diphthongs: ei, ai, oi, У™П…, aП…, iУ™, eУ™, П…У™.The system of RP consonants consists of the following two wide categories ofsounds:
1) those typically associated with a noise component: p, b,t, d, k, g, f, v, Оё, Г°, s, z, Кѓ, з, h, tКѓ, dз;
2) those without a noise component which may share manyphonetic characteristics with vowels - 7 sonorants : m, n, Е‹, 1, r, j, w.
Measurements of text frequency of occurrence of RP vowels andconsonants display the following picture: [Gimson: 2001]
According to the phonotactic specification of/r/ occurrence,RP is a non-rhotic or r-less accent, i.e./R/ does not occurafter a vowel or at the end of the words. It may be claimed that/r/ in RP has a limited distribution, being restricted in its occurrenceto pre-vocalic positions.
Prof. J C. Wells i...
