RP as the standard pronunciation of Great Britain. Instability of the standard.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1053.

The term “RP” was created/introduced by Daniel Jones. Received Pronunciation (Gimson): 1) Conservative RP used by older generation and by some professions and social groups. 2) General RP (usually is spoken on BBC). 3) Advanced RP used by young people of exclusive social groups (mostly of the upper class). It may also be used for prestige by some professional circles. Conservative: [ai#], [au#]. General: [a:#]. Advanced: [a:]. Received Pronunciation/clearly sociological (Walles): 1) Main stream RP used by upper-middle class. [a:#]. 2) “U” RP used by upper crust. [a:]. 3) “Near/adoptive” RP spoken by adults who did not speak it when they were children. [ai#] and [au#]. In the last 20-25 years the states of RP have undergone the change. David Rosewane says that the Estuary English is the future of the RP. 1) Vocalization of ‘l' in the phonetic context while in RP dark variant of ‘l' is used. e.g.: milk -/ [miok]/[miwk]/[miuk]. 2) Glottal stop [?] is used instead of [t] in some positions especially at the end of the word. e.g.: quite nice -/ [kwai? nais]. 3) Tend to use [i:] instead of [i] at the end of the words like ‘happy'. 4) Assimilation (coalescent). [d+j] -/ [tch]; [t+j] -/ [dgh]. e.g.: would you, could you, attitude. 5) Narrowing of pitch range. The tendency leads to a more neutral pronunciation. 6) Frequent usage of falling/rising nuclear tunes. That is explained by the grammatical peculiarities. Speakers use distinctive questions. Sometimes it does not require any answer. 7) Omission the sense giving pauses. 8) Stressing words that are normally not stressed in a sentence: form words, particles, pronouns, articles, prepositions etc.

Language is an abstraction from speech, a generalization of speech; and speech is a reality of language. National language is treated as a historical category evolving from conditions of economic and politic concentration which characterize the formation of notion. National language is a socio-historical category that denotes a language which a means of intercommunication of a nation, it's the standard of its form, the language of a nation's literature. Spoken language is not uniform it may vary from locality to locality and from one social group to another. National language falls into dialects. A dialect is a variation of a national language used as a means of communication by a group of people that are connected be region or territory profession, social class, education, age, sex, religion, occupation. Dialects: territorial/social. Dialectology as a brunch of linguistic is concerned with territorial dialects. Its main aim is to study geographical differences. On the territory of UK recognize 4 dialects: Welsh English, Scottish English, Irish English, English English (Northern + Southern). Alongside with dialects there is always a standard/literary pronunciation. Literary pronunciation is governed by orthoepic norm. The literary spoken form has its national pronunciation standard. Due to some political, economic, historical and social factors one of the logical dialects becomes the literary dialect, which becomes the standard of the country language. A “standard” is a socially accepted variety of a language, established by a codified norm of correctness. Today all the English-speaking nations have their own national variants of pronunciation and each of them has peculiar features that distinguish it from other varieties of English. Standard national pronunciation is sometimes called an “orthoepic norm”. Orthoepy is the some total of pronouncing forms of a language which provides the uniformity of its sound forms. Orthoepic norms include the rules of using phonemes and allophones, word stress and intonation. Diglossia – linguistic duality in which the standard form of a language and one of its regional dialects are used by the same individual in different social contexts and situations. Bilingualism – the command of 2 different languages. The usage of this or that language is also determined by specific communicative situation. Standard is not homogeneous. There are variations in pronunciation of individual phonemes, words, sentences. Idiolect – the speech of an individual speaker. Intra-idiolectal variations – variations in pronunciation of one and the same native speaker of the language. Intra-idiolectal variations: 1) Spontaneous, accidental, unintentional, unconditioned, non-functional, non-distinctive linguistically. 2) Intentional, caused by different styles of speech. Style of speech is a special form of speech suited to the aim and the context of the utterance, circumstances of communication, character of the audience etc. Variations in pronunciation due to different styles are called stylistic variations. Jones distinguishes: 1) Rapid, familiar style; 2) Slower, colloquial style; 3) The natural style used in addressing a fair-sized audience; 4) The acquired style of the stage; 5) The acquired style used in singing. According to Shcherba every situation of communication requires special style of pronunciation. He distinguishes 2 extremities: 1) Colloquial style (people's chorus talk); 2) The full style (more understandable and distinct). We clearly articulate the sounds. Inter-idiolectal variations – in the pronunciation of the same phoneme, word or sentence, in the same phonetic context and the same style of speech of different speakers. 1) Comprises individual peculiarities in the pronunciation of different native speakers for which it is different or impossible to account (which are different to explain). These may be variations which resulted from early influences, which grew into a habit or they may be the result of different peculiarities of anatomic structure, or functioning of speaker's organs of speech or hearing mechanism. 2) Determined by: Generation or sex to which the speaker belongs.