DIALECT MYTHS AND REALITY

(Wolfram, Dialects and American English, pp. 4-5)

Following are some of myths contrasting with linguistic reality:

MYTH: A dialect is something that someone else speaks.

REALITY: Everyone who speaks a language speaks some dialect of the language; it is not possible to speak a language without speaking a dialect of the language.

MYTH: Dialects always have highly noticeable features that set them apart.

REALITY: Some dialects get much more attention than others; the status of speaking a dialect, however, is unrelated to public commentary about its special characteristics.

MYTH: Only varieties of a language spoken by socially disfavored groups are dialects.

REALITY: The notion of dialect exists apart from the social status of the language variety; there are socially favored as well as socially disfavored dialects.

MYTH: Dialects result from unsuccessful attempts to speak the "correct" form of a language.

REALITY: Dialect speakers learn their language by mimicking members of their speech community who speak the same variety, not by failing in their attempts to mimic speakers of the standard variety.

MYTH: Dialects inherently carry negative social connotations.

REALITY: Dialects are not necessarily positively or negatively valued; their social values are derived strictly from the social position of their community of speakers.

!!!!!!!As we see, the popular uses of the term dialect strongly reflect the attitudes about dialect differences which have developed in the United States over the centuries. Whether or not we choose to use a currently neutral term as a euphemism for dialect, such as language difference, language variety, or language variation, we still have to confront the mismatch between the public perception of linguistic diversity and the linguistic reality. In fact, given the popular attitudes about dialect diversity, there is a good chance that whatever euphemism we use for the term dialect will eventually take on the kinds of connotations that dialect currently holds.

Received Pronunciation (RP)

RP was for many years the accent of British English usually chosen for the purposes of description and teaching, in spite of the fact that it is only spoken by a small minority of the population; it is also known as the "public school" accent, and as "BBC pronunciation". There are clear historical reasons for the adoption of RP as the model accent: in the first half of this century virtually any English person qualified to teach in a university and write textbooks would have been educated at private schools: RP was (and to a considerable extent still is) mainly the accent of the privately educated. It would therefore have been a bizarre decision at that time to choose to teach any other accent to foreign learners. It survived as the model accent for various reasons:

- one was its widespread use in "prestige" broadcasting, such as newsreading;

- secondly, it was claimed to belong to no particular region, being found in all parts of Britain (though in reality it was very much more widespread in London and the south-east of England than anywhere else);

- and thirdly, it became accepted as a common currency - an accent that (it was claimed) everyone in Britain knows and understands. Some detailed descriptions of RP have suggested that it is possible to identify different varieties within RP, such as "advanced", or "conservative". Another suggestion is that there is an exaggerated version that can be called "hyper-RP". But these sub-species do not appear to be easy to identify reliably. There is an opinion is that RP was a convenient fiction, but one which had regrettable associations with class and privilege, so the BBC accent is treated as the best model for the description of English.

BBC pronunciation

The British Broadcasting Corporation is looked up to by many people in Britain and abroad as a custodian of good English; this attitude is normally only in respect of certain broadcasters who represent the "official" voice of the Corporation, such as newsreaders and announcers, and does not apply to the "unofficial" voices of people such as disc-jockeys and chat-show presenters (who may speak as they please). The high status given to the BBC's voices relates both to pronunciation and to grammar, and there are listeners who write angry letters to the BBC or the Radio Times to complain about "incorrect" pronunciations such as "loranorder" for "law and order". Although the attitude that the BBC has a responsibility to preserve some imaginary pure form of English for posterity is extreme, there is much to be said for using the "official" BBC accent as a standard for foreign learners wishing to acquire an English accent. The old standard "RP" is based on a very old-fashioned view of the language; the present-day BBC accent is easily accessible and easy to record and examine. It is relatively free from class-based associations and it is available throughout the world on the Overseas Service of the BBC. The BBC nowadays uses quite a large number of speakers from Celtic countries (particularly Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and the description of "BBC Pronunciation" should not be treated as including such speakers. The Corporation has its own Pronunciation Unit, but contrary to some people's belief its function is more to advise on the pronunciation of foreign words and of obscure British names than to monitor pronunciation standards. Broadcasters are not under any obligation to consult the Unit, and in addition, the BBC now obliges broadcasters to pay for consulting it.

Estuary English

Many learners of English have been given the impression that this is a new accent of English. In reality, there is no such accent, and the term should be used with care. The idea originates from the sociolinguistic observation that some people in public life who would previously have been expected to speak with a BBC (or RP) accent now find it acceptable to speak with some characteristics of the accents of the London area (the Estuary referred to is the Thames estuary), such as glottal stops, which would in earlier times have caused comment or disapproval.

Oxford accent

Some writers on English accents have attempted to subdivide "Received Pronunciation" into different varieties. Although the "Oxford accent" is usually taken to be the same thing as RP, it has been suggested that it may differ from that, particularly in prosody. There seems to be no scientific evidence for this, but the effect is supposed to be one of dramatic tempo variability, with alternation between extremely rapid speech on the one hand and excessive hesitation noises and drawled passages on the other. This is all rather fanciful, however, and should not be taken too seriously; if the notion has any validity, it is probably only in relation to an older generation.