Received Pronunciation Essay Example

London, where the term “received” was used in the sense of “approved” or “accepted” which coincides with his viewpoint, that the great advantage of this accent was, that is was “widely understood”.

Unction and Social Importance of RP “In Great Britain pronunciation reflects both on regional and social factors. ” (Svartvik/Leech 2006: 124) Today we can distinguish between three types of standardized accent: general RP, which is the teaching model used in many dictionaries; refined RP, which is generally associated with upper-class families and old British movies; and near-RP, which consists of a mixture of regional and individual characteristics. ibid. 127) General RP is approximately spoken by “only about three per cent of the English population”, but its great acceptance can be mostly ascribed to the mass media (Trudgill/Hughes 1996:3). Every speaker of the BBC had to speak RP on the radio and on television since the programmes existed. (Svartvik/Leech 2006: 125) Today though, it is different: Each BBC host speaks his or her own local accent.

This reflects on the overall change of English pronunciation, which is also visible when people moving within the country adapt new accents at their new workplaces.  As mentioned before, speakers of RP are historically connected with a higher social status and even nowadays “research has shown that RP has a high rating as being pleasing, articulate and prestigious”. Apart from being widely understood, RP also constitutes well-known norms to which other varieties such as Cockney and Estuary English can be compared for reference. Melcher/Shaw, 2003:45) Especially for teaching English it is quite useful to talk about varieties of a language, as it encourages a reflective behaviour

towards language. Considering these advantages, the logical conclusion is to use RP as a model for foreign language teaching, which is apparently the case because it is “the kind of English that foreigners want to learn”. Special Features of RP Unlike in General American, Scottish and Irish accents, no /r/-sound follows a vowel, that means that for example the word car is pronounced.

With mass media like television offering a broad variety of newsreaders, actors and other people who speak their own accents, people get used to understand these accents more easily and their acceptance also raises. RP will probably remain very important, as all the dictionaries, text and grammar books still use RP as a model and especially in foreign language learning an immediate change would not be possible. Although, it is very likely that some popular accents might even be used in the classroom to make students aware of different pronunciations, the stability of RP as a reference for pronunciation is essential.