Received Pronunciation (RP), also called the Queen's (or King's) English,[1] Oxford English[2] or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms.[3] RP is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as "the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England",[4] but some have argued that it can be heard from native speakers throughout England and Wales.[5][6] Although there is nothing intrinsic about RP that marks it as superior to any other variety, sociolinguistic factors have given Received Pronunciation particular prestige in parts of Britain.[7] It has thus been the accent of those with power, money and influence since the early to mid 20th century, though it has more recently been criticised as a symbol of undeserved privilege.[8] However, since the 1960s, a greater permissiveness towards allowing regional English varieties has taken hold in education[9] and the media in Britain; in some contexts conservative RP is now perceived negatively.[10]
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The introduction of the term Received Pronunciation is usually credited to Daniel Jones after his comment in 1917 "In what follows I call it Received Pronunciation (abbreviation RP), for want of a better term."[11] However, the expression had actually been used much earlier by Alexander Ellis in 1869[12] and Peter DuPonceau in 1818[13] (the term used by Henry C. K. Wyld in 1927 was "received standard"[14]). According to Fowler's Modern English Usage (1965), the correct term is "the Received Pronunciation". The word received conveys its original meaning of accepted or approved – as in "received wisdom".[15] The reference to this pronunciation as Oxford English is because it was traditionally the common speech of Oxford University; the production of dictionaries gave Oxford University prestige in matters of language. The extended versions of the Oxford English Dictionary give Received Pronunciation guidelines for each word.
RP is an accent (a form of pronunciation) and a register, rather than a dialect (a form of vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation).[16] It may show a great deal about the social and educational background of a person who uses English. Anyone using RP will typically speak Standard English although the reverse is not necessarily true (e.g. the standard language may be pronounced with a regional accent, such as a Yorkshire accent; but it is very unlikely that someone speaking RP would use it to speak Scots).
RP is often believed to be based on the Southern accents of England, but it actually has most in common with the Early Modern English dialects of the East Midlands. This was the most populated and most prosperous area of England during the 14th and 15th centuries. By the end of the 15th century, "Standard English" was established in the City of London.[17] A mixture of London speech with elements from East Midlands, Middlesex and Essex, became known as Received Pronunciation.[18]
Some linguists have used the concept of RP but dismissed the name as too politically-loaded. The Cambridge-published English Pronunciation Dictionary (aimed at those learning English as a foreign language) uses the term "BBC English", on the basis that the name "Received Pronunciation" is "archaic" and that BBC news-presenters no longer suggest high social class and privilege to their listeners.[19] The phonetician Jack Windsor Lewis frequently criticises the name "Received Pronunciation" on his blog: he has called it "invidious",[20] a "ridiculously archaic, parochial and question-begging term"[21] and argued that American scholars find the term "quite curious".[22] He used the term "General British" [to parallel "General American"] in his 1970s publications of A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of American and British English.[23] Beverley Collins and Inger Mees use the phrase "Non-Regional Pronunciation" for what is often otherwise called RP, and reserve the phrase "Received Pronunciation" for the "upper-class speech of the twentieth century".[24]
Researchers generally distinguish between three different forms of RP: Conservative, General, and Advanced. Conservative RP refers to a traditional accent associated with older speakers with certain social backgrounds; General RP is often considered neutral regarding age, occupation, or lifestyle of the speaker; and Advanced RP refers to speech of a younger generation of speakers.[25]
The modern style of RP is an accent often taught to non-native speakers learning British English.[2] Non-RP Britons abroad may modify their pronunciation to something closer to Received Pronunciation in order to be understood better by people unfamiliar with the diversity of British accents. They may also modify their vocabulary and grammar to be closer to Standard English, for the same reason. RP is often used as the standard for English in most books on general phonology and phonetics and is represented in the pronunciation schemes of most dictionaries published in the United Kingdom.
Daniel Jones transcribed RP pronunciations of all common words in his English Pronouncing Dictionary. This is still being published by Cambridge University Press, and is now edited by Peter Roach. There are two other pronunciation dictionaries in common use: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, complied by John C Wells, and the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, compiled by Clive Upton. There are differences amongst the dictionaries. One of the most prominent differences is Clive Upton's inclusion of /a/ in BATH words within RP.[26]
RP is also used in online dictionaries, such as Wiktionary and howjsay.com.
Traditionally, Received Pronunciation was the "everyday speech in the families of Southern English persons whose men-folk [had] been educated at the great public boarding-schools"[27] and which conveyed no information about that speaker's region of origin prior to attending the school.
In the 19th century, there were still British prime ministers who spoke with some regional features, such as William Ewart Gladstone.[28] From the 1970s onwards, attitudes towards Received Pronunciation have been changing slowly. The BBC's use of announcers with strong regional accents, such as Yorkshire-born Wilfred Pickles, during World War II (in order to distinguish BBC broadcasts from German propaganda) is an earlier example of the use of non-RP accents.[29]
Although admired in some circles, RP is disliked in others. It is common in parts of Britain to regard it as a south-eastern English accent rather than a non-regional one and as a symbol of the south-east's political power in Britain.[8] A 2007 survey found that residents of Scotland and Northern Ireland tend to dislike RP.[30] It is shunned by some with left-wing political views, who may be proud of having an accent more typical of the working-classes.[31] The left-wing British band Chumbawamba recorded a song protesting against the accent: "R.I.P. RP" from their album The Boy Bands Have Won.
When consonants appear in pairs, fortis consonants (i.e. aspirated or voiceless) appear on the left and lenis consonants (i.e. lightly voiced or voiced) appear on the right
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal1 | m | n | ŋ | |||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | |||||
| Affricate | tʃ dʒ | |||||||
| Fricative | f v | θ ð2 | s z | ʃ ʒ | h3 | |||
| Approximant | ɹ1, 4 | j | w | |||||
| Lateral | l1, 5 | |||||||
Unless preceded by /s/, fortis plosives (/p/, /t/, and /k/) are aspirated before stressed vowels; when a sonorant /l/, /ɹ/, /w/, or /j/ follows, this aspiration is indicated by partial devoicing of the sonorant.[33]
Syllable finals /p/, /t/, /tʃ/, and /k/ are either preceded by a glottal stop (see Glottal reinforcement) or, in the case of /t/, fully replaced by a glottal stop, especially before a syllabic nasal (bitten [bɪʔn̩]).[33][34] The glottal stop may be realised as creaky voice; thus a true phonetic transcription of attempt [əˈtʰemʔt] would be [əˈtʰemm̰t].[35]
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| long | short | long | short | long | short | |
| Close | iː | ɪ | uː | ʊ | ||
| Mid | e* | ɜː | ə | ɔː | ||
| Open | æ | ʌ | ɑː | ɒ | ||
^* While most dictionary publishers use /e/, the actual realisation is [ɛ~e̞].
Examples of short vowels: /ɪ/ in kit, mirror and rabbit, /ʊ/ in put, /e/ in dress and merry, /ʌ/ in strut and curry, /æ/ in trap and marry, /ɒ/ in lot and orange, /ə/ in ago and sofa.
Examples of long vowels: /iː/ in fleece, /uː/ in goose, /ɜː/ in nurse and furry, /ɔː/ in north, force and thought, /ɑː/ in father, bath and start.
RP's long vowels are slightly diphthongised. Especially the high vowels /iː/ and /uː/ which are often narrowly transcribed in phonetic literature as diphthongs [ɪi] and [ʊu].
"Long" and "short" are relative to each other. Because of phonological process affecting vowel length, short vowels in one context can be longer than long vowels in another context.[35] For example, a long vowel followed by a fortis consonant sound (/p/, /k/, /s/, etc.) is shorter; reed is thus pronounced [ɹiːd̥] while heat is [hiʔt].
Conversely, the short vowel /æ/ becomes longer if it is followed by a lenis consonant. Thus, bat is pronounced [b̥æʔt] and bad is [b̥æːd̥]. In natural speech, the plosives /t/ and /d/ may be unreleased utterance-finally, thus distinction between these words would rest mostly on vowel length.[34]
In addition to such length distinctions, unstressed vowels are both shorter and more centralised than stressed ones. In unstressed syllables occurring before vowels and in final position, contrasts between long and short high vowels are neutralised and short [i] and [u] occur (e.g. happy [ˈhæpi], throughout [θɹuˈaʊʔt]).[36] The neutralisation is common throughout many English dialects, though the phonetic realisation of e.g. [i] rather than [ɪ] (a phenomenon called happy tensing) is not as universal.
| Diphthong | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| Closing | ||
| /eɪ/ | /beɪ/ | bay |
| /aɪ/ | /baɪ/ | buy |
| /ɔɪ/ | /bɔɪ/ | boy |
| /əʊ/ | /bəʊ/ | beau |
| /aʊ/ | /baʊ/ | bough |
| Centring | ||
| /ɪə/ | /bɪə/ | beer |
| /eə/ | /beə/ | bear |
| /ʊə/ | /bʊə/ | boor |
Before World War II, /ɔə/ appeared in words like door but this has largely merged with /ɔː/. "Poor" traditionally had /ʊə/ (and is still listed with only this pronunciation by the OED), but a realisation with /ɔː/ has become more common, see poor–pour merger.[37] In the closing diphthongs, the glide is often so small as to be undetectable so that day and dare can be narrowly transcribed as [d̥e̞ː] and [d̥ɛː] respectively.[33]
RP also possesses the triphthongs /aɪə/ as in ire and /aʊə/ as in hour. Different possible realisations of these diphthongs are indicated in the following table: furthermore, the difference between /aʊə/, /aɪə/, and /ɑː/ may be neutralised with both realised as [ɑː] or [äː].
| As two syllables | Triphthong | Loss of mid-element | Further simplified as |
|---|---|---|---|
| [aɪ.ə] | [aɪə] | [aːə] | [aː] |
| [ɑʊ.ə] | [ɑʊə] | [ɑːə] | [ɑː] |
Not all reference sources use the same system of transcription. In particular:
Most of these variants are used in the transcription devised by Clive Upton for the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) and now used in many other Oxford University Press dictionaries.
Like all accents, RP has changed with time. For example, sound recordings and films from the first half of the 20th century demonstrate that it was usual for speakers of RP to pronounce the /æ/ sound, as in land, with a vowel close to [ɛ], so that land would sound similar to a present-day pronunciation of lend. RP is sometimes known as the Queen's English, but recordings show that even Queen Elizabeth II has changed her pronunciation over the past 50 years, no longer using an [ɛ]-like vowel in words like land.[39]
The 1993 Oxford Dictionary changed three main things in its description of modern RP, although these features can still be heard amongst old speakers of RP. Firstly, words such as cloth, gone, off, often were pronounced with /ɔː/ (as in General American) instead of /ɒ/, so that often sounded close to orphan (See lot–cloth split). The Queen still uses the older pronunciations,[40] but it is rare to hear them on the BBC any more. Secondly, there was a distinction between horse and hoarse with an extra diphthong /ɔə/ appearing in words like hoarse, force, and pour.[41] Thirdly, final y on a word is now represented as an /i/ – a symbol to cover either the traditional /ɪ/ or the more modern /iː/, the latter of which has been common in the south of England for some time.[42]
Before World War II, the vowel of cup was a back vowel close to cardinal [ʌ] but has since shifted forward to a central position so that [ɐ] is more accurate; phonetic transcription of this vowel as ⟨ʌ⟩ is common partly for historical reasons.[43]
In the 1960s the transcription /əʊ/ started to be used for the "GOAT" vowel instead of Daniel Jones's /oʊ/, reflecting a change in pronunciation since the beginning of the century.[44] Joseph Wright's work suggests that, during the early 20th century, words such as cure, fewer, pure, etc. were pronounced with a triphthong /iuə/ rather than the more modern /juə/.[45]
The change in RP may even be observed in the home of "BBC English". The BBC accent of the 1950s was distinctly different from today's: a news report from the 1950s is recognisable as such, and a mock-1950s BBC voice is used for comic effect in programmes wishing to satirise 1950s social attitudes such as the Harry Enfield Show and its "Mr. Cholmondley-Warner" sketches. There are several words where the traditional RP pronunciation is now considered archaic: for example, "medicine" was originally said /ˈmedsɪn/ and "tissue" was originally said /ˈtɪsjuː/.[46]
John Wells has identified the following people as RP speakers: