Received Pronunciation
In England, there is one accent that has come to stand out above all others,
conveying associations of respectable social standing and a good education. This
'prestige' accent is known as Received Pronunciation, or RP. It is often associated with
the southeast of England, where most RP-speakers live or work, but in fact it can be
found anywhere in the country. Accents usually tell us where in the country a person is
from; RP tells us only about a speaker's social or educational background.
The ancestral form of RP developed in the late Middle Ages, in London and the
southeast, as the accent of the court and the upper classes. It was well established over
400 years ago. The Elizabethan courtier George Puttenham, writing in 1580, thought
that the English of' northern men, whether they be noblemen or gentlemen “is not so
courtly or so current as our Southern English is”. Some courtiers did hold on to their
local speech - Walter Raleigh kept his Devonshire accent, for instance. But most people
anxious for social advancement would move to London and adopt the accent they found
there. As a result, the accent soon came to symbolize a person's high position in society.
During the nineteenth century, RP became the accent of the public schools, such as
Eton, Harrow, and Winchester, and was soon the main sign that a speaker had received
a good education. It spread rapidly throughout the Civil Service of the British Empire
and the armed forces, and became the voice of authority and power.
Because RP had few regional overtones and was more widely understood than any
regional accent, it came to be adopted by the BBC when radio broadcasting began in
the 1920s. During the Second World War, the accent became associated in many
people's minds as the voice of freedom. The terms RP and BBC English became
synonyms.
These days, with the breakdown of rigid divisions between social classes and the
development of the mass media, RP is no longer the preserve of social elite. It is now
best described as an 'educated' accent - or perhaps 'accents' would be more precise, for
there are now (and maybe always have been) several varieties. The most widely used
variety is that generally heard on the BBC. But in addition there are both old-fashioned
and trend-setting forms of RP. The trend-setting variety is often described as 'far back',
or 'frightfully, frightfully' - the 'Sloane Ranger' accent of the 1980s. The more
conservative variety is found mainly in older speakers - what is sometimes referred to as
a rather 'plummy' tone of voice. You'll hear it in the recordings of BBC plays or
announcements from the 1920s and 1930s.
Early BBC recordings show the remarkable extent to which RP has altered over just a
few decades, and they make the point that no accent is immune to change, not even the
'best'. In addition, RP is no longer as widely used as it was fifty years ago. Only about 3
per cent of British people speak it in a pure form now. Most other educated people have
developed an accent which is a mixture of RP and various regional characteristics 'modified' RP, some call it, or perhaps we should talk about modified RPs, as in each
case the kind of modification stems from a person's regional background, and this varies
greatly.
Regionally modified speech seems ready to make a come-back in educated British
society. In late Victorian times, regional accents were heavily stigmatized, and this
attitude is still to be found, as we have seen. But times are changing. Several
contemporary politicians make a virtue out of their regional background, and the BBC
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employs several announcers with regionally modified accents. Nor is it uncommon,
these days, to find educated people expressing hostility towards RP, both within and
outside Britain, because of its traditional association with conservative values.
None the less, RP continues to be the most widely used accent in the Court,
Parliament, the Church of England, the legal profession, and in other national
institutions. It has received more linguistic research than any other accent. It is still the
only accent taught to foreigners who wish to learn a British model, and it is thus widely
used abroad. In fact, today there are far more foreign speakers of RP in other countries
than mother-tongue users in Britain.
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