Received Pronunciation: Historical Background and Application

· Historically RP came from the Royal court. This is why it can be referred to us as the Queen's English, although the current queen has an accent almost unique to her alone. As the court was based in London, RP has a lot in common with the speech of the south-east of the country. The accent further developed in private schools and universities of the 19^th century, that's why it can occasionally be called Oxford English. People increasingly felt obliged to adopt the accent in order to be successful in society. Prestige is still attached to this accent, and people usually assume speakers have a high level of education. Nowadays sharp divisions in class are going. When people lighten their regional accents,, they always lighten it in the direction of RP, so it's felt to be Standard English.

· Early BBC recordings show how much RP has altered over just a few decades, and they point that no accent is immune to change, not even “the best”. But the most important observation is that RP is no longer as widely used today as it was 50 years ago. It is still the standard accent of the Royal Family, Parliament, the Church of England, the High Court and other national institutions: but less than 3% of the British people speak it in a pure form now.

· Most educated people have developed an accent which is mixture of RP. As A. Burrell (1933) points it is the business of educated people to speak so that no one may be able to tell in what country their childhood was passed. You cannot even say an RP speaker is from Britain since most are from overseas.

According to some data RP was the voice of power and authority in the 1930s, but by the 1990s, it had become the voice of the stuck-up. Tony Blair, for example, still spoke RP in the 1980s, but by the 1990s he was speaking in Estuary English, an everyman's London English, which is halfway between RP and working-class Cockney.

Having accomplished the description of regional non-RP accents of England, we would like to say that we didn't attempt to give a detailed account of all regional differences in accents of remote rural areas rather we concentrated on urban accents, which can be heard when one travels throughout the country and which are most likely to be encountered by foreign tourists.

As for the American variant of English the comparisons show that there are differnences both in intonation, which concern the direction of the voice pitch and realization of the terminal tones, and in sound structure. In GA the voice doesn't fall to the bottom mostly. This explains the fact that the English speech for the Americans sounds “affected” and “pretentious” or “sophisticated”. And for the English, Americans sound “dull”, “monotonous”, “indifferent”.

To sum up all afore said, it would be perfectly natural thing to say that language in serving personal and social needs becomes part of ceaseless flux of human life and activity. Human communication cannot be comprehended without recognizing mutual dependence of language and context. The mystery of language lies, if nowhere, in its endless ability to adapt both to the strategies of the individual and to the needs of the community, serving each without imprisoning either.

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