Innovations in RP: social and regional approaches
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | RP, like any other accent, is constantly changing. These changes are sometimes reflected in the transcriptions (e.g. Upton et al. 2003); more often than not, however, they are ignored so as not to upset the ‘hard-won uniformity’ (Wells 2001). What also attracts much attention is the source of these innovations. In my paper, I discuss the prevailing approaches to the new RP sounds, which include t-glottaling, l-vocalisation, intrusive /r/, th-fronting and the coalescence of yod. The approaches tend to fall into two groups. Whereas the first stresses the geographical connections and often cites Cockney as the accent that affects RP the most, the other one explains the innovations as predominantly social in character. I argue that neither approach can legitimately claim to fully account for what seems to be an intricate set of changes with different motivations. The roles RP now fulfills are so diverse that linguists may end up having to admit there are more RPs than one (as tentatively suggested in Wells 1994), or, possibly, abandoning the concept of RP altogether (Milroy 2001). Furthermore, determining the source of language change plays a crucial role in predicting the future state of things; RP being no exception whatsoever. |