Definition and Examples of Received Pronunciation

Definition and Examples of Received Pronunciation Received pronunciation, commonly abbreviated as RP, is a once prestigious variety of British English spoken without an identifiable regional dialect. It is also known as  British Received Pronunciation, BBC English, the Queens English, and posh accent.  Standard British English  is sometimes used as a synonym.  The term  received pronunciation  was introduced and described by  phonetician  Alexander Ellis in his book Early English Pronunciation  (1869). History of the Dialect Received Pronunciation is only around 200 years old, said linguist David Crystal. It emerged towards the end of the 18th century as an upper-class accent, and soon became the voice of the public schools, the civil service, and the British Empire (Daily Mail, October 3, 2014).   Author Kathryn LaBouff gives some background in her tome, Singing and Communicating in English: It was standard practice until the 1950s for university students to adjust their regional accents to be closer to RP. RP was traditionally used on stage, for  public speaking, and by the well-educated. In the 1950s, RP was used by the BBC as a broadcast standard and was referred to as BBC English. Since the 1970s, the BBC label has been dropped and RP has slowly been more inclusive of regional influences throughout the United Kingdom. By the turn of the twenty-first century RP was spoken by only 3 percent of the population. Today BBC broadcasters do not use Received Pronunciation, which actually today now sounds out of place; they use a neutralized version of their own regional accents that is intelligible to all listeners.  (Oxford University Press, 2007) Characteristics of RP Not every dialect in Britain has a pronounced h sound, which is one difference between them, among differences in vowels.  The prestige British accent known as received pronunciation (RP) pronounces  h  at the beginning of words, as in  hurt, and avoids it in such words as  arm. Cockney speakers do the reverse;  I urt my harm, explained David Crystal.  Most English accents around the world pronounce words like  car  and  heart  with an audible  r; RP is one of the few accents which does not. In RP, words like  bath  are pronounced with a long  a (bahth); up north in England it is a short a. Dialect variations mainly affect the  vowels  of a language.  (Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeares Language. Cambridge University Press, 2008) Prestige and Backlash Having a dialect or manner of speaking  associated with different classes is called a  social dialect. Having esteem or social value to a manner of speaking is called linguistic  prestige. The flip side of that coin is called accent prejudice. In Talking Proper: The Rise and Fall of the English Accent as a Social Symbol, author Lynda Mugglestone wrote, Adoptive RP, a common feature of the past, is in this sense increasingly a rarity in modern language use as many speakers reject the premise that it is this accent alone which is the key to success. Reversing the polarities still further, RP... has regularly been deployed for those roundly depicted as villains in, for example, Disneys films The Lion King and Tarzan. (Oxford University Press, 2007) Afua Hirsch wrote in  The Guardian  about the backlash in Ghana: [A] backlash is growing against the old mentality of equating a British accent with prestige. Now the practice has a new acronym, LAFA, or locally acquired foreign accent, and attracts derision rather than praise.In the past we have seen people in Ghana try to mimic the Queens English, speaking in a way that doesnt sound natural. They think it sounds prestigious, but frankly it sounds like they are overdoing it, said Professor Kofi Agyekum, head of linguistics at the University of Ghana.There has been a significant change now, away from those who think sounding English is prestigious, towards those who value being multilingual, who would never neglect our mother tongues, and who are happy to sound Ghanaian when we speak English. (Ghana Calls an End to Tyrannical Reign of the Queens English. April 10, 2012)

The Haunted House (1859) by Charles Dickens

The Haunted House (1859) by Charles Dickens The Haunted House (1859) by Charles Dickens is actually a compilation work, with contributions from Hesba  Stretton, George Augustus Sala, Adelaide Anne Procter,  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹Wilkie Collins, and Elizabeth Gaskell.  Each writer, including Dickens, writes one â€Å"chapter† of the tale.  The premise is that a group of people has come to a well-known haunted house to stay for a period of time, experience whatever supernatural elements might be there to experience, then regroup at the end of their stay to share their stories.  Each author represents a specific person within the tale and, while the genre is supposed to be that of the ghost story, most of the individual pieces fall flat of that.  The conclusion, too, is saccharine and unnecessary- it reminds the reader that, though we came for ghost stories, what we leave with is  a mirthful  Christmas story. The Guests Because this is a compilation of separate short stories, one would not expect much character growth and development (short stories are, after all, more about the theme/event/plot than they are about the characters).  Still, because they were interconnected via the primary story (a group of folks coming together to the same house), there could have been at least a bit of time spent developing those guests, so as to better understand the stories they ultimately told.  Gaskell’s story, being the longest, did allow for some characterization and what was done, was done well.  The characters remain generally flat throughout, but they are recognizable characters- a mother who would act like a mother, a father who acts like a father, etc.  Still, when coming to this collection, it cannot be for its interesting characters because they just are not very interesting (and this could be even more acceptable if the stories themselves were thrilling ghost stories because then there i s something else to entertain and occupy the reader, but †¦).    The Authors Dickens, Gaskell, and Collins are clearly the masters here, but in my opinion Dickens was in fact outshone by the other two in this one.  Dickens’s portions read too much like someone trying to write a thriller but not quite knowing how (it felt like someone mimicking  Edgar Allan Poe- getting the general mechanics right, but not quite being Poe).  Gaskell’s piece is the longest, and her narrative brilliance- use of dialect in particular- are clear.  Collins has the best paced and most appropriately toned prose.  Salas’s writing seemed pompous, arrogant, and long-winded; it was funny, at times, but a bit too self-serving.  The inclusion of Procter’s verse added a nice element to the overall scheme, and a nice break from the various competing proses.  The verse itself was haunting and reminded me quite a bit of the pace and scheme of Poe’s â€Å"The Raven.†Ã‚  Stretton’s short piece was perhaps the most enjoyable, because it was so well-written and more intricately layered than the rest.   Dickens himself was reportedly underwhelmed and disappointed by his peers’ contributions to this serial  Christmas tale.  His hope was that each of the authors would put into print a certain fear or terror particular to each of them, as Dickens’s story did.  The â€Å"haunting,† then, would be something personal and, while not necessarily supernatural, could still be understandably frightening.  Like Dickens, the reader may be disappointed with the end-result of this ambition. For Dickens, the fear was in revisiting his impoverished youth, the death of his father and the dread of never escaping the â€Å"ghost of [his] own childhood.†Ã‚  Gaskell’s story revolved around betrayal by blood- the loss of a child and lover to the darker elements of humanity, which is understandably frightening in its way.  Sala’s story was a dream within a dream within a dream, but while the dream could have been unnerving, there seemed little that was truly frightening about it, supernatural or otherwise.  Wilkie Collins’s story is the one in this compilation which could actually be considered a â€Å"suspense† or â€Å"thriller† story.  Hesba Stretton’s story, too, while not necessarily scary, is romantic, somewhat suspenseful, and well-accomplished overall.   When considering the group of tales in this compilation, it is Stretton’s which leaves me wanting to read more of her work.  Ultimately, though it is called The Haunted House, this compilation of ghost stories is not really a ‘Halloween’-type read.  If one reads this collection as a study of these individual writers, their thoughts, and what they considered haunting, then it is quite interesting.  But as a ghost story, it is no extraordinary achievement,  possibly because Dickens (and presumably the other writers) was a skeptic and found the popular interest in the supernatural rather silly.