British English Accents

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English English

Roughly speaking the non-RP accents of England may be grouped like this:

1. Southern accents.

1) Southern accents (Greater London, Cockney, Surrey, Kent, Essex,

Hertfordshire,

Buckinghamshire);

2) East Anglia accents (Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire,

Bedfordshire,

Northamptonshire, Leicestershire;

3) South-West accents (Gloucestershire, Avon, Somerset, Wiltshire).

2. Northern and Midland accents.

1) Northern accents (Northumberland, Durham, Cleveland);

2) Yorkshire accents;

3) North-West accents (Lancashire, Cheshire);

4) West Midland (Birmingham, Wolverhampton).

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12. Received Pronunciation and Estuary English.

British standard pronunciation

1. Public school pronunciation as long as RP is no longer valid; the young are often influenced by other prestigious accents

e.g. Cockney or Mid-Atlantic

RP can't be called simply educated pronunciation either, since not all educated people use it, nor can all those who use it be safely described as "educated". If the traditional term RP is retained, it is because of its widely spread and a convenient name for an accent which remains acceptable and intelligible within Britain. There are nevertheless two limiting factors in defining the model. Firstly, the dictionary represents the pronunciation current in usage among speakers, among speakers of the middle generation, while in general English dictionaries the given pronunciation is typical of the usage of an older generation which must frequently be regarded as archaic or obsolescent. It happens so, the speech of the young is likely at any time to be regarded as generally current among middle-aged speakers is usually found out ascertained why consensus of opinion; by the analysis of recordings, made by speakers of relevant-aged groups, especially concerning certain crucial areas, such as the type of vowel used in weak syllables.

2. Certain bounds of view of the model are provided by the nature of the phonological system itself thus the model requires 2 significantly different vowels in pairs such as

Sam (SE/AM)

Psalm (SA:M)

or it is the feature of RP that "r" is not pronounced before a following consonant or finally except in the case of linking "r". So all the variations in pronouncing "r" can be considered as non-standard.

The existence of RP on the British linguistic map gives accent judgments a peculiar importance in England especially, and makes the English more sensitive than most people to accent differences. It is in England alone that Standard English speakers are divided by an accent-bar, when one side of which is RP and on the other side all the other accents. And very often the first judgment made on a stranger's speech is the answer: which side of the accent bar is he? It is not easy to explain how this accent bar works. There is no doubt that RP is a privileged accent - one's social life or one's career both may be affected by whether person possesses it or not. It is surely an advantage to speak RP, it may be a disadvantage not to speak it. Outside England though it has no prestige and it appears just as regional to an American speaker as any other way of pronouncing English.

Speakers of RP are at the top of the social scale, and their speech gives no clue to their regional origin. The higher the person is on the social scale, the less regionally marked is his accent and the less it will differ from RP. The relationship between class and accent can be represented like this (Здесь должен быть рисунок пирамиды, на левой стене Social valuation, снизу Regional variation)

Traditionally, the British middle class and upward striving working classes are strongly concerned about their accents even nowadays. They are anxious to attain and a certain spoken dialect in this case it is RP and anxious for conformity to rigid conventions of correctness.

J.C. Wells in his book "Accents of English" gives another classification of different varieties of RP.

1. Upper-class RP spoken by the aristocracy.

2. Main stream RP which is equal to general RP.

3. Adopted RP spoken by adults who didn't speak RP as children. The usual reason of adopting RP is the change in one's social circumstances.

4. Near RP comprising accents which are not exactly RP though not very different from it.

Not all people stay in one social position throughout life, those who climb the social scale will tend to modify their accent in the direction of RP, helping to maintain the existing relationship between class and accent. They will not only attempt to make their speech more like RP but will also speak more slowly and carefully in order to avoid mistakes.

Estuary English

is supposed to be a new kind of English that is due to take over as a new standard English replacing RP. It is characterized as "a variety of modified regional speech, a mixture of non-regional and local South-Eastern English pronunciation and intonation". If one imagines a continuum with RP and London speech at either end, estuary English speakers are to be found grouped in the middle round.

The phonetic characteristics of Estuary English are as follows:

· many of the features that distinguish it from RP are features it shares with Cockney;

· things that may mark it as being distinctively South-Eastern las against RP which is non-localizable within England.

But these features are spreading geographically and socially, thus losing their localizability and thus to some extend justifying the claim that EE is "tomorrow's RP". Unlike Cockney EE is associated with standard grammar and usage.

EE may be the result of confluence two social trends - an up-market movement (designed to appeal or to satisfy people in the higher social classes) of originally Cockney speakers and a down-market trend towards "ordinary" (typical of (or belonging to) the upper-class of society a posh-accent) speech by the middle class.

If you were unlucky enough to have such an accent (RP), you would lower it, you would try to become more consumer friendly. The variety is distinctive as a dialect, not just as an accent which can be seen from the selection of features which are becoming increasingly widespread.

Estuary English is characterized by the following features:

• Non-rhoticity.

• Use of linking R

• A broad A (ɑː) in words such as bath, grass, laugh, etc.

• T-glottalization: realizing non-initial, most commonly final, /t/ as a glottal stop instead of an alveolar stop, e.g. water (pronounced /wɔːʔə/).

• H-dropping, i.e., Dropping [h] in stressed words (e.g. [æʔ] for hat)

In the first edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary Daniel Jones described the type of pronunciation as a kind of standard, having its base in the educated pronunciation of London and the Home Counties.

But in recent times the original concept of RP has been diluted due to particular changes in the British society. There are, nevertheless, two limiting factors in defining the model: firstly, the dictionary represents the pronunciation current in usage among speakers of the middle generation while the speech of the young is likely at any time to be unstable, often reflecting transitory fashion; secondly, certain bounds are provided by the nature of the phonological system itself.

13. Dialects in England.

Dialect or variety is distinguished for its vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. In this sense the two major varieties of English, the british English and the American English, as well as any two local varieties, like Lancashire or New York Brooklyn speech, may be treated as “dialects”

Accent is atype of pronunciation or a feature on one which can be found in the speech of any individual or the whole speech community. We can speak an American accent, a French accent in english, and by that we mean only the sound of spoken English, for ex vowels, consonants, stress, rhythm…

We are going to look in greater detail at the RP and at the regional non-RP accents of England.

Roughly speaking the non-RP accents of England may be grouped like this: Southern accents: 1) southern accents (Greater London, Cockney, Kent, Essex, Buckinghamshire); 2) East Anglia accents (Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire); 3)South-West accents (Avon, Somerset).

Northern and Midland accents: 1) Northern accents (Northumberland, Cleveland); 2) Yorkshire accents (Lancashire, Cheshire); 4) West Midland (Birmingham)

For certain political, geographical, economic and cultural reasons one of the dialects becomes the standard language of the nation and its accent - the Received Standard Pronunciation. This was the case with London Dialect or, broader, the Southern type of pronunciation variously known as the RP of Britain. In Britain RP stands in strong contrast to all the other ways of pronouncing standard English pronunciations put together. English people are divided by the way they talk into 3 groups: 1)RP-speakers of standard English (without accent); 2)non-RP-speakers (with an accent); 3)who speaks dialects.

The existence of RP gives accent judgements a peculiar importance in England and makes the English more sensitive. It's England alone that standard English speakers are divided by accent bar, on one side of which is RP and on the other - all the other accents.

Outside England (Britain) though it seems to have no prestige and it appears just as a regional as any other way of pronouncing English the existence of RP is a bad rather than a good thing.

Educated Southern speech is very much near-RP accent whereas non-standard accents are very much near Cockney.

It has been long established that Cockney is a social accent - the speech of working-class áreas of the Greater London.

The counties of northern England are not far from the Scottish border, so the influence of the Scotch accent is noticeable, though there are of course many features of the northern English regions. The most typical representative of the speech of this área is Newcastle área.

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14. Differences between Southern and Northern groups of dialect.

We grouped regional accents of England into southern and northern ones. This división is very approximate of course, because there are western and eastern accents but their main accent variations correspond either with southern or northern accentual characteristics. Thus we would like to point put here the main differences between southern and northern accents. Welsh English.

As every one probably knows Wales is a bilingual área. In Wales English dominates over Welsh in urban áreas, in the west and north-west of the country the balance being in favour of Welsh, where English is learnt at schools as a second language.

However, Welsh English at the level of educated speech and writing is not much different from that of English English. Scottish English.

We must first make clear that the status of Scottish English is still debated. Some linguists say that it is a national variant. Others say that it is a dialect.

English has been spoken in Scotland for as long as ii has been spoken in England. In the Highlands and islands of northern and western Scotland, however, Gaelic is still the native language of thousands of speakers from these regions.

Nowadáys educated Scottish people speak a form of Scottish stabdard English which grammaticálly and lexically is not different from English used everywhere, although with an obvious Scottish accent. Northern Ireland English.

The English of northern parts of the island with its centre in Belfast has its roots in Scotland. Now speaking about Northern Ireland, it is true to say that English here is not homogeneous. Áreas of the far north are heavily Scots-influenced. Other parts are marked by less heavily Scots-¡nfluenced varieties of English.

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15. The socio-linguistic situation in the USA. The varieties of American English.

The sociolinguistic situation in the USA moulded by certain historic, geographic, demographic, political, cultural and linguistic factors may be characterized as exoglossic, i.e. having several languages on the same territory with the predominance of American English.
The starting point of American English was the English language of the early 17th century which has developed under particular circumstances into an independent variety - the national variant of English in America.
The foundations of most diversities in American pronunciation were laid during the colonial period. Some of the present differences in American pronunciation are attributed to that period as well.
American English shows a lesser degree of dialect that British English; three main types of cultivated speech are recognized: the Eastern type, the Southern type and Western or General American which do not conflict with each other. The most widespread type of American standard pronunciation is General American.
GA is the form of speech used by radio and TV and also in all forms of official intercourse, it is the language of educated people.
The total number of AE consonants of the three major types, GA, Eastern American, Southern American, in general coincides with the inventory of RP consonants with the only exception being the AE /hw/ phoneme which is not listed in the system of RP consonants.
The differences mainly concern the pronunciation of the individual consonant phonemes and their occurrence, or distribution.
The most marked differences between GA and RP are in the articulation and distribution of vowel phonemes.
GA vowels do not exhibit consistent relationships between vowel length and quality as are found in RP. AE vowels are not divided into historically short and historically long monophthongs.
Many differences involve the pronunciation of individual words or group of words.
The major point of accentual differences concerns the distribution of stress within the stress pattern to which a given word belongs. The differences comprise two-, three-, four-, five-syllable words.
Intonational divergencies between GA and RP mainly concern the emotionally neutral speech. Here the nomenclature of pitch contours display structural differences which lead to functional differences, namely, in the attidunal function of intonation.

16. Differences between Received Pronunciation and General American pronunciation.

GA is the form of speech used by the radio & TV. It’s mostly used in scientific, cultural & business intercourse. GA is the prevailing form of speech & pronunciation in New York & St. Louis.
Differences:
1) classification of vowels accord to the stability of articulation is the most controversial (спорный ) subject in GA . there are 5 diphthongs in GA: [ei, ai, oi, au, ou], in RP there are 8: + [iэ, uэ, зu].
2) The pronunciation of [r] sound between a vowel & a consonant: [tз:rn], [bз:rd], [sta:r]. thus GA is rhotic. E.g. far in GA [fa:r], in RP [fa:].
3) One more peculiar feature of pronunciation of vowels in GA is their nasalation, when they are preceded or followed by a nasal consonant (taka, small, name). nasalation is often called an American twang (гнусавость).
4) GA front vowels are somewhat different from RP. In words like very, pity GA has [i:] rather than [i]. Vowel [e] is more open in GA.
5) GA [r] is articulated differently from RP one. The impression is one of greater retroflexion (the tip of the tongue is curled back further than in RP).
6) The “wh” spelling in GA is represent by [w] sound or sometimes transcribed as [hw]. Most Americans make a clear distinction betw [wh] & [w] words: where-ware, which-witch.
7) The sonorant [j] is usually weakened or omitted altogether in GA betw a consonant & [u:] as in the words: news [nu:z], student [stu:dent].

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17. Phonostylistics as a science.

19. The subject-matter of phonostylistics (Phs.).

Phs . studies the way P. means are used in this or that particular situation which exercises the conditioning influence of a set of factors which are referred to as extra linguistic. The aim of Phs. is to analyse all possible kinds of spoken utterances with the main purpose of identifying the P. features, both segmental and suprasegmental, which are restricted to certain kinds of contexts, to explain why such features have been used and to classify them into categories based upon a view of their f. Style-forming and style-modifying factors: is the aim or purpose of the utterance. The aim is the strategy of the speaker. 1)the form of communication (monologue or dialogue); 2)the speaker’s attitude to the situation (emotions, thoughts, etc); 3)the degree of formality (formal – informal); 4) the degree of spontaneity or of preparedness (the speaker’s educational background played a great role). Styles of speech according to the purpose of communication: 1)informational 2)academic (scientific) 3)publicistic (oratorical) 4)declamatory (artistic) 5)colloquial (familiar). 1)Using the informational style the speaker ought to be careful not to distract the listener by what he is saying (TV-announcers). Written representation of oral and prepared speech. 2)Scientific style is used in lectures or science subjects or when reading out loud a piece of scientific prose. The purpose is to attract the listener’s attention to what is the most important in the lecture. 3)Publicistic style is used by politicians, the purpose is to except the influence of the listener to convince him of smth., & make him accept the speaker’s point of view. 4)It is used in reading poetry, prose aloud, in stage speech to appeal to the feelings of the listener. 5)Conversational formulae familiar of everyday communication are used in speech of friends within similar groups. It can have a wide range of intonation patterns.

17. Phonostylistics as a science.

Variety of pronunciation depends on many factors (political, social, cultural, educational, etc) having no connection with linguistics proper. Phonostylistics – phonetical organization of prose and poetic texts. Here are included rhythm, rhythmical structure, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and correlation of the sound form and meaning. Also studies deviation in normative pronunciation.

Phonostylistics is a branch of linguistics which includes the analysis of various extra-linguistic factors instead of systematically excluding them.To extra-linguistic factors scholars refer firstly different personal characteristics of the speaker (his age, his educational and social status, his occupation), as well as different voice qualities (dry, flat, husky, etc.) together with different features of voice dynamics (loudness, tempo, continuity, rhythmicality, register) and, secondly, the factors belonging to the situation proper which is bound to determine this or that variation of usage (the form of speech, the degree of formality or spontaneity, etc.) – that is all those forming the extra-linguistic context. The range of concepts phonostylistics includes is as follows: the phonetic norm and deviation from the norm; phonetic synonyms; euphonology; sound symbolism, etc. It is only in the context of a communicative situation that the essential properties of the linguistic system can be discovered and analysed. The extra-linguistic situation can be roughly defined by the following factors: purpose, participants and setting. It is also important to consider the speaker’s attitude to the situation

18. Phonetic functional styles.

While classifying various speech realizations from phonostylistic point of view an analyst should single out criteria that are different from the ones used as a basis for distinguishing functional styles of L. we might suggest that various speech realizations can be grouped on the basis of some most general common phonetic characteristics. Thus such speech realizations as informative reading over radio and TV, a text produced behind the screen, lectures, reports, etc. can be grouped together since they are monologues with reference to the written texts. From the point of view of functional sphere of publicistics, while a lecture is referred to scientific functional style.

Texts that are traditionally referred to different functional styles turn out to have identical phonetic

organization. For instance, the phonetic experiments carried out recently show that texts belonging to different functional styles (an extract from ? extract from a guide for tourists) read with identific aim don’t reveal any difference in phonostylistic aspect.

One of the well-known classification of phonetic styles is a classification by SM Gaiduchic. He distinguishes five phonetic styles:

- solemn торжественный

- scientific business научно-деловой

- official business официально-деловой

- everyday бытовой

- familiar непринужденный

As we may see the above-mentioned phonetic styles on the whole correlate with functional styles of L.

They are differentiated on the basis of spheres of discourse.

The other way of classifying phonetic of classifying phonetic styles is suggested by JA Dubovsky who discriminates the following five styles:

- informal ordinary

- formal neutral ( )

- formal official

- informal familiar

- declamatory (artistic, stage style) mostly concerns theatrical activities, screen productions, TV and all sort of recitations.)

The division is based on different degrees of formality or rather familiarity between the speaker and the listener. With each styles subdivisions are observed. But as a author himself writes it is rather the principle of presenting the text for description and analysis because “no theory has yet created a completely symmetrical classification of speech acts”.

When we consider the problem of classification phonetic styles according to the criteria described above we should distinguish so far between segmental and suprasegmental level of analysis because some of them (the aim for the utterance for example) result in variations of mainly suprasegmental level, while others (the formality of situation, for instance) reveal segmental varieties. So for the sake of describing and explaining phonostylistic varieties it seems preferable to consider each level separately until a more adequate system of correlation is found.

The style – differentiating characteristics mentioned above give good grounds for establishing intentional styles suitable not only for sociolinguistic research but also for the purpose of learning and teaching a foreign L.

It might be generally assumed that there are five intentional styles singled out mainly according to the purpose of communication and to which we could refer all the main varieties of the texts generated in everyday communication of a modern man. In oral speech we realize different types of information (intellectual, emotional, volitional) which may be rendered by different prosodic means. In every stylistic register there must exist a certain invariant – an ideal norm of speech behaviour in a certain situation.

They are as follows:

1 Informational style The most neutral among styles is informational style (formal, neutral) which is employed in educational descriptive narratives, press reporting and broadcasting.

2 Academic style (Scientific) Academic style characterizes lectures, scientific discussions, conferences, classes to entertain. It is used to deliver this message to the audience, to establish a contact with the listeners. The speaker must sound self-assured, authoritative, instructive.

3 Publicistic style (Oratorial) The aim of the speaker using publicistic style is to persuade and influence the audience, to substantiate his arguments. Oratorical skills need special training. Speech of this kind is always prepared.

4 Declamatory (Artistic) (artistic, stage style) mostly concerns theatrical activities, screen productions, TV and all sort of recitations.

5 Conversational (Familiar)

Conversational style is very frequent because a lot of English speaking people use it in their everyday speech. It is often called informal, as we use it in family circles, among friends and acquaintances. The speakers are comparatively free, they do not control their linguistic behaviour, they sound natural, use non-standard forms of speech. Much depends on their social background, their social status. This kind of speech greatly depends on the situation and the complex study of conversational style is important from the didactic point of view, though the emotional part of conversational style is equally important.

But differentiation of intonation according to the purpose of communication only is definitely not enough.

As was mentioned above, there are other factors, that affect intonation in various extralinguistic situations.

We could add that any style with very little exceptions is seldom realized in its pure form. Each generated text is likely to include phonetic characteristics of different styles. In such case we talk about over lapping (fusion) of styles.

To summarize we could say that the distinction of phonetic styles is a purely formal one because any particular theory while in use should control and give meaning to the descriptive statement. So in this respect the suggested classification is near to adequate way on reflecting numerous speech realizations, on the one hand, and on the other, it is the way to understand and interpret the system.

19. The subject-matter of phonostylistics.

Phonostylistics- is supposed to study sounds on their stylistic relevant.

Pronunciation is a no way homogeneous . Variety of pronunciation depends on many factors (political, social, cultural, and educational) having no connection with the linguistic proper. So to bridge up the gap between linguistic and extra-linguistic factors (those which accused by the situation of speaking) in analyzing stylistic differentiation of oral texts mainly phonostylistics was found it which is not just a new branch of linguistics, but an entirely different way of viewing phonetic phenomena. Linguists were until recently not aware of this way of analysis and awareness came only as a result of detailed analysis of spoken speech.

Traditionally two linguistic factors – which are easily connected with other aspects of linguistic structure, stress, its placement, intonation group, pause. And, on the contrary, those elements which have a relatively isolated function and have nothing to do with aspects of the language system, should be called EXTRA-LINGUISTIC.

Two these scholars refer firstly different personal characteristics of the speaker (ex. Different vocal or pronunciation effects, those lacking semantic value-breathy or raspy voice qualities, the factors belonging to the situation proper which is bound to determine this or that variation of usage, ex. The puspose, the degree of formality or «spontaneity», or the form of speech – that is all those forming to extra-linguistic context. We can resowe as well as term itself suggests, phonostylistics studies the phonetic characteristics of oral speech from the stylistics of oral speech from the stylistic point of view.

Phonostylistics was founded as a result of functional overlap (a common area of interest or knowledge) between phonetics and stylistics, thus it can be called an INTERDISCIOLINARY SUBJECT.

It fully reveals its interdisciplinary nature when relying on a number of adjacent linguistic and non-linguistics science: paralinguistics, psychology, literary criticism, esthetics, information theory.

Phonetics is concerned with the study, with phonostylistic determinents of oral speech, that is how a person speaks or talks, rather that what he is talking about. This problem receives a high priority consideration in phonostylistics.

TO DO THE PHONOSTYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE UTTERANCE is to describe the linguistic as well as non-linguistic in their full interactional contacts.

The range of probelems (concepts) phonostylistics includes in the following:

1/ the problem of norm or deviation of the norm

2/ phonetic synonyms

3/ euphonology

4/ sound symbolism

5/ phonetic functional style

6/ extra-linguistic situation