For a long
time the most prestigious accent of British English was "Received
Pronunciation",
the
accent of the upper class which ruled the British empire.
Those
who spoke R.P. could be
received into circles from which others were excluded. R.P.
was rooted in London, but gathered such prestige that it
spread throughout the upper echelons of the empire.
In
the 21st century things have changed, both socially and
phonetically. The empire is long gone; in Britain, the
traditional
upper class is no longer significant; and those who do hold
power and influence speak a wider range of accents.
Nonetheless, the accent of
the higher socio-economic group in
the southeast of England continues to predominate among those in
public life such as leading actors and politicians. But this contemporary Standard British
accent differs considerably from the
classic mid-20th-century descriptions of R.P., notably in its vowels. The R.P. heard for instance in films of
the 1940s and 1950s is now considered old-fashioned, even amusing.
The
diagram below illustrates schematically the position of Standard
British in southeast England today (the logos of newspapers
standing for socio-economic groups broadly associated with them).
Although the accent of a social minority, Standard British is less
elite than R.P. was, and social boundaries are less rigid than in
the past: Standard British differs from R.P. substantially as a result
of
assimilating features from the lower-prestige accents of its home,
southeast England. So we can think
of a phonetic scale between Standard British and Popular London, the
middle-ground being occupied by Estuary English.
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