Received Pronunciation: Historical Background and Application

“Authority and American Usage,” an interesting essay written by the brilliant and quick-witted David Foster Wallace, presents an argument on different ways of understanding the ever-changing American usage in the English language. Keeping up with the English language in America is like chasing your new, untrained puppy down the street. Tiring and basically impossible to get a hold of. Over the past centuries, the English language has evolved so much, that if you took a person from the 13th century and threw them in the middle of New York City in 2013, it would be as if two different languages were being spoken.

As society begins to change so do other aspects that are within that particular society. Within the articles “Why Good English is Good for You” by John Simon, “Do You Speak American” by Robert MacNeil, and “Lost in America” by Douglas McGrey, each author gives their own insight as to how social changes have impacted the language within America, as well as the implications of those changes. While they each argue different views on how those implications have benefitted or hindered the language, they all agree on the fact that the language is ever-changing.

Do you ever think about the way you speak and why? Well, Paul Robert does an excellent job explaining why people use the dialect they use in Speech Communities. He discusses that people change their use of language throughout their lives to conform to either society or to what kind of person they want to be, or to just conform to who they need to be at a particular moment, in which I agree. People’s choice of language, including myself, are affected by many of their surroundings, such as where they live and grow up at, their peers, and a person’s work place.

On January 30, 2018, at 2:00p.m., my newsletter presentation was given to four teachers in the exceptional children’s department at Douglas Byrd High School. It was important for me to review the newsletter with my coworkers because our work team is currently in the process of gathering new information for the start of the new semester which began on January 26, 2018. The age range of the students in our department range from 15-19 years of age; however, because of their varied learning disabilities and function levels, we use a lot of beginning reader teaching methods in an effort to work more effectively with all of our students.

United States of America, small in history but large in diversity continues to face new challenges with language as time continues to turn. In the documentary “Do You Speak American?” Robert MacNeil analyzes the English language and reveals many dialects that culturally defines us. Regional dialect is one of the many strongholds of all cultures and now it has reached its’ zenith and today it is slowly declining because it does not possess the human nature of advancement. Optimistically, it allows people to learn how to cooperate with each other. In order to advance and adopt a person has to change; I believe that the acceptance of cultural adaptations, diversity, and industrialization can prove that the decline of speech does not cause a

The great characteristics of Maine’s dialects had been clearly discussed in the Dialect Project 1 such as rich vocabularies, various syntaxes, different morphologies, and unique lexicon. However, the main goal of this project is to explore those previously explained concepts to see how Maine’s dialects are received such as negative or positive, inaccurate or not, too exaggerate or too simple, and how various ways of linguistics are presented in real life situations. Speaking of phonology, the descriptions of words are exactly what explained in the Dialect Project 1, which is there are many words are being pronounced with the Ah sound like the pronunciation of the word “father.” Moreover, there are different words but have the same pronunciations in Maine’s dialects. Beyond this similarity, the other thing seems inaccurate is the pronunciation of the letter R. The demonstration of this project will demonstrate that the word R is pronounced very soft and less stressed. Syntactically, the word order, phrases or idioms in Maine’s dialects are very broad, rich, and its ridiculous meaning might make people confuse sometimes. Last but not least is the variation lexicon that some words are written in SAE, but the meaning is slightly different overall.

At Morgan State University, the student population is uniquely diverse. Students come from different parts of the United States to gain a degree and to experience all that Morgan has to offer. As of Fall 2016, the most frequent state of residency included: Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, District of Columbia, Virginia, and other states ("Enrollment Data” 1). These states not only brought a variety of personalities, but as well as a variety of languages. Students from each of these states have a dialect specific to their region in where they live. A case study of dialect on the campus of Morgan State University revealed the phonetic, morphological, and lexical differences of the American English language in the Northern and Southern

8c) I am kind of surprised that the British accent is perceived as more credible. There might be some cases where a British accent would be more trustworthy than an American. Although, everyone, no matter what their accent is, can come across as deceiving when they start talking. As a side note, the source they received this information from—Psychology Today— is not necessarily the most credible source itself. I feel as if a person who has a British accent might be more engaging in a conversation with a stranger over an American accent, but I do not personally think that makes them more reliable. Perhaps it could be seen that way because we want to trust them more since we enjoy their

The South is probably the most linguistically diversified part of the nation. Blacks and whites from Atlanta to Charleston to Nashville speak a different form of standard English in a different version of the Southern accent. Part of this linguistic diversity is reflected in the way that the Southern aristocracy can “shift not only vocabulary and pronunciation, but even grammar, according to the audience” ((1)McDavid 219). This

The Standard American English dialect (SAE) is, in many ways, similar to the Pacific Northwest dialect as well as different in other ways. The following essay will go into detail of the unique linguistic features that the Pacific Northwest dialect comprises of. Phonology In Foster and Hoffman’s journal article, they state many phonological differences in the Pacific Northwest dialect compared to the SAE.

African American English is diverging from Standard American English. As shown in Do You Speak American (2005), AAE originates from the time of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. English was introduced to trade ports in Africa by colonialists, resulting in the creation of pidgin - a mixture of English and African languages that is still in use today. More recently, African Americans who have moved from the South to the North have been more segregated, creating greater divergence between AAE and SAE. As many African Americans maintain ties to the South, such as continued contact with friends or family in the south, similarities between AAE and southern dialects remain. However, each group have selected features that are important, such as maintaining ‘r’ in the North or keeping certain features as a way of preserving history, resulting in different dialect patterns between the North and the South to develop.

The Cockney accent is a British dialect possessing a longstanding and rich history. Famous for its use of rhyming slang and unique linguistics, the Cockney accent, and the history associated with it, is a source of pride to many living in London’s East End. The traditional definition of a cockney is one who was born within the sound of St. Mary-le-Bow Church bells, though, an accent typical of working class Londoner suffices as well (Mott 71). Despite the accent’s century-long history being tied to the working class of London’s East End, there is now a large shift in the region’s dialect. A large influx of immigration has occurred in the East End, and the result is the slow emergence of a new accent. Sociolinguistics Dr. Sue Fox refers to it as Multicultural London English, and describes the accent as one of “Jamaican, Indian-subcontinent and West-African English” (Hayes). With the emergence of the new accent, the notorious rhyming slang is disappearing, and certain traditional Cockney inflections are becoming less frequent. While the accent is not completely lost due to native speakers carrying it with them as they migrate from the East End, the research as it currently stands, suggests the accent’s future is one of continued decline.

People from lower-class who had become rich while the industrial Revolution were the cause of this change. They were looking for ways to separate themselves from others in lower status, so the prestigious non-rhotic pronunciation was cultivated to highlight their new station (Cambridge University Press, as cited in Wolchover,

The results of question 6 appear to further reinforce the previous assumption: a staggering 91% of the native speaker participants do not agree that adoptive speakers should be encouraged to learn one of the varieties of RP (Fig.

The Milroys then analysed phonological variables (in this case /a/ and /ɛ/) in relation to the network structures and the individual speaker’s degree of integration into a network.