Lecture 7. Territorial varieties.

British and American pronunciation

models. The choice of the teaching norm.
Nowadays two main types of English are spoken in the English-speaking
world: British English and American English.
According to British dialectologists (P. Trudgill, J. Hannah, A. Hughes and
others), the following variants of English are referred to the English-based group:
English English, Welsh English, Australian English, New Zealand English; to the
American-based group: United States English, Canadian English. Scottish English
and Ireland English fall somewhere between the two, being somewhat by
themselves.
According to M. Sokolova and others, English English, Welsh English,
Scottish English and Northern Irish English should be better combined into the
British English subgroup, on the ground of political, geographical, cultural unity
which brought more similarities - then differences for those variants of
pronunciation.

Teaching practice as well as a pronouncing dictionary must base their

recommendations on one or more models. A pronunciation model is a carefully
chosen and defined accent of a language.
In the nineteenth century Received Pronunciation (RP) was a social
marker, a prestige accent of an Englishman. "Received" was understood in the
 sense of "accepted in the best society". The speech of aristocracy and the court
phonetically was that of the London area. Then it lost its local characteristics and
was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as "King's English". It
was also the accent taught at public schools. With the spread of education
cultured people not belonging to upper classes were eager to modify their accent
in the direction of social standards.
The choice of the teaching norm. Writing is the symbolic
representation of language by graphic signs. It is
comparatively recent cultural development. Spoken language is acquired without
specific formal instruction, whereas writing must be taught and learned through
deliberate effort. The origins of the written language lie in the spoken language,
not the other way round. .
The written form of language is usually a generally accepted standard and is
the same throughout the country. But spoken language may vary from place to
place. Such distinct forms of language are called dialects! The varieties of the
language are conditioned by language communities ranging from small groups to
nations. Speaking about the nations we refer to the national variants of the
language. According to A.D. Schweitzer national language is a historical category
evolving from conditions of economic and political concentration which
characterizes the formation of nation. In the case of English there exists a great
diversity in the realization of the language and particularly in terms of
pronunciation. Though every national variant of English has considerable
differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar; they all have much in
common which gives us ground to speak of one and the same language — the
English language.
Every national variety of language falls into territorial or regional dialects.
Dialects are distinguished from each other by differences in pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary. When we refer to varieties in pronunciation only, we
usethe term accent. So local accents may have many features of pronunciation in
common and are grouped into territorial or area accents. For certain reasons one of
the dialects becomes the standard language of the nation and its pronunciation or
accent - the standard pronunciation.
The literary spoken form has its national pronunciation standard. A standard
may be defined as "a socially accepted variety of language established by a
codified norm of correctness". Standard national pronunciation is sometimes called
"an orthoepic norm''. Some phoneticians however prefer the term "literary
pronunciation".

Teaching practice as well as a pronouncing dictionary must base their

recommendations on one or more models. A pronunciation model is a carefully
chosen and defined accent of a language.
In the nineteenth century Received Pronunciation (RP) was a social
marker, a prestige accent of an Englishman. "Received" was understood in the
sense of "accepted in the best society". The speech of aristocracy and the court
phonetically was that of the London area. Then it lost its local characteristics and
was finally fixed as a ruling-class accent, often referred to as "King's English". It
was also the accent taught at public schools. With the spread of education
cultured people not belonging to upper classes were eager to modify their accent
in the direction of social standards.
All the sounds in all languages are always in process of change. During
those times when people from different regions communicated with each other not
often, it was natural that the speech of all communities did not develop in one
direction or at the same rate. Moreover, different parts of the country were
subjected to different extreme influences, which were the reasons for different
phonetic structures of the language.

One of the vital features of literary language, which distinguish it from its
dialects, is the existence of more or less uniformed norms. A literary language
has its own lexical, national language possesses two forms: the written form,
which is the literary uniform of a language and spoken form, which is not uniform
and characterized by the individual features of the speaker. English is represented
in writing and printing by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, a dozen of
punctuation marks and such devices as capitals and italics. In the spoken form of
English we evidently use about a hundred sounds and variations in pitch, stress,
pause etc. Each sound is used with some modifications in actual speech: For
example some people have a full /r/ and others a very slight indication of the
sound. The pronunciation of words varies considerably among the different regions
in which English is spoken, so that we can easily distinguish speakers according to
their pronunciation.

However, there is no strict boundary between written and spoken forms of a

language because some elements of the spoken form may be found in the written
form. As to the dialects they are the linguistic varieties of the language used by
some group of speech community only in the oral or spoken form and differ from
the spoken literary form of a language in more or less degree. Dialects may be
distinguished from each other by their pronunciation, grammar, lexicon and
stylistics. A special branch of linguistics which studies the variability of a given
language is called dialectology. Dialectology has a close relationship to history,
geography and other sciences as dialects may be important in the formation of
nations and any change in the process of migration and urbanization. The
pronunciation features of dialects are studied by a special branch of phonetics,
namely dialectological phonetics. It is possible to investigate the literary and
dialect pronunciations of the same language. The literary language has its
orthoepic norm, i.e. the sum of rules of the spoken form characterized by the unity
of the sound material formed in the process of its historical development. By the
term norm we mean more or less constant and stable feature of pronunciation, i.e.
all the components of the phonetic structure-phonemes, syllables, stress and
intonation.Speaking about literary orthoepic norm of English, some linguists use
the terms standard English or uniform English, the tatter has already been used in
this book, J. S. Kenyon cited the following idea advanced by A.L. James: "...
speech is immeasurable and there is no absolute standard of pronunciation... It is
quite evident that we are not entitled to conclude that there is only a simple
standard of pronunciation and only one correct way of speaking English. There are
varieties that are acceptable throughout the country, and others are not"1.
Sometimes "Good English" is distinguished from "Bad English" ("Vulgar
English"). On the basis of its usage the following principal varieties of English are
distinguished:

1) Formal English (Limited use) - more often written than spoken - speaking and
writing for somewhat restricted groups in formal situations;

2) General English (Unlimited use) - both spoken and written - speaking and
writing of educated people in their private or public affairs;

3) Informal English (Limited use) - more often spoken than written;

4) Nonstandard English (Limited use) - chiefly spoken - language not much

affected by school instruction; often conspicuously local; not appropriate for public
affairs or for use by educated people. According to the above classification P.G.
Perrin and G.H. Smith came to the conclusion that Formal, General and Informal
English make up Standard English, on the contrary, the term "Nonstandard
English" refers to the everyday speech of many people as ... “ a variety or level of
language in its own right”. We cannot accept this idea and do not use the terms
"Standard" or "Nonstandard" as we have already defined the notion "orthoepic
norm" of pronunciation.