Analysing The Queens Received Pronunciation English Language Essay

Analysing The Queens Received Pronunciation English Language Essay The purpose of this project is to identify if the Queen speaks with the same polished Received Pronunciation (RP) accent today as she did 50 years ago and whether there have been any generational variations to the RP spoken within the Royal Family. Firstly this project will introduce the subject of sociolinguistics with a focus on the differences between accents and dialects and the history and rules pertaining to RP. Secondly, current opinions and attitudes will be discussed along with recent research that has been carried out examining the decline of RP. Lastly it will analyse findings from my own comparisons of three Royal Family dialogues. Sociolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and society, and how society influences or affects the way in which language is used by individuals or groups (Crystal, 2008). When a person talks it is easy to recognise regional differences in their speech as everyone has an accent or dialect and this can often lead to assump tions about their background, education and even their place in society. It is important to understand the difference between an accent and a dialect as they are two very different aspects of speech. An accent refers to the differences in pronunciation only (Crystal, 2008), for example, a speaker with a southern accent would pronounce /a/ using long vowel /a:/ whereas a speaker with a northern accent would pronounce /a/ with a short vowel /à ¦/: Long vowel, Southern Short vowel, Northern Bath /bÉ‘:ÃŽÂ ¸/ /bà ¦ÃƒÅ½Ã‚ ¸/ Grass /gra:s/ /grà ¦s/ Demand /di:ma:nd/ /di:mà ¦nd/ A dialect however refers to the features of pronunciation along with grammar and vocabulary such as sentence structure and use of verbs. For example: Standard English Regional Dialect She is a good girl She’s a canny lass (Geordie/Newcastle) How are you? Ow bist old butt? (Forest of Dean) He is frightened He’s feeling frit (Lincolnshire) I’ll visit in the Autumn I’ll visi t in the fall (American English) An accent and a dialect can both give an indication as to the speaker’s geographical origin (Crystal, 2008). Due the growing variety of accents and dialects in the UK, a ‘Standard English’ (SE) has emerged that is taught in schools and used in print and broadcasting. It is also the standard taught to speakers of foreign languages. The phrase Received Pronunciation was initially coined in 1869 by the linguist A J Ellis but the phonetician, Daniel Jones, was the first person to adopt it to describe the accent of the social elite (British Library). Received Pronunciation (RP) is an accent that is associated with being typically British and is also known as ‘The Queens English’ or ‘BBC English’ as it is seen as a prestige accent (Graddol, Leith & Swann, 1996). No specific authority gave the accent its special status but as RP is spoken mainly in the south east it is generally associated with that area but it is found all over the country. It is a non specific accent as it gives no indication of a speaker’s geographical origin however it does reveal information about their social and educational background.