Changes in the British Pronunciation Norm: From Received Pronunciation (RP) to Standard Southern British (SSB)

Abstract

The article deals with the issue of the British pronunciation norm and the changes in it in the course of the last few decades. Both segmental and suprasegmental features of phonation are considered with the aim of describing the most noticeable phenomena that characterize Standard Southern British as the norm of today and distinguish it from Received Pronunciation as the norm of the past. A comparative study of several pronouncing dictionaries starting from the earliest one published at the end of the 19th century to the latest one has made it possible to verify the changes in the phonemic as well as the phonetic composition of words. A large corpus of authentic recorded speech has been subjected to analysis through the prism of observations made by British phoneticians concerning the recent changes in the articulation of vowels and consonants. A few most obvious changes in the pitch movement of British English have been commented upon as their influence on the Russian language is impossible to ignore. No less important was the issue of the system of terminology used when describing the British pronunciation standard: as it reflects the changing nature of the norm, its overview helped to clarify the nature of the changes themselves.

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