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More Gels, Please
The Times bemoans the decline of Received Pronunciation (RP) - the traditional accent of Britain's middle classes.
What used to be called "the Queen's English" has been replaced by "Estuary English" - all strangulated vowels and mockney accents, designed to make middle class speakers sound "down wif the yoof." Indeed, if one wants to get ahead in the British media industry, cut-glass vowels are probably a handicap: Hence the large numbers of impeccably-bred BBC presenters who "dumb down" their accents. There are even intensely upper-middle class Brits in the media who affect Jamaican accents, which is one of the most hilarious sounds known to man. Elements of the Aussie accent? with its peculiarly rising inflection at the end of phrases? has become commonplace among British youngsters?
Politicians are at it too: It is only a matter of time before Old Etonian David "Dave" Cameron sounds like Alfred Steptoe.
Accent isn't just a British obsession: Both President George W Bush and Democratic contender Hillary Clinton have been mocked for playing up the southern-ness of their accents. Bush, at least, lived in Texas for many years, but has been known to slip regional phrasing into speeches according to his audience. Mrs Clinton's attempt at a southern accent was utterly bizarre:
If an English candidate was to arrive in Glasgow and begin to deliver a speech in "hoots jings the noo" Scots, he would be quickly run out of town.
Of course, it is always sad to see an accent disappear, even though RP has been cast as the bad guy by language study academics since the 1960s. Your correspondent remembers a series of language professors attacking "bloodless" RP accents and lengthily illustrating the relationship between power and accent. RP accents had it, or suggested it; other accents were typically oppressed.
RP's defenders, though, could be a weird bunch. There was an angry reaction from the Daily Mail brigade when children's television show Blue Peter introduced presenters from Britain's Celtic fringes. A Northern Irish girl came in for particular grief from some viewers, who complained that their efforts to teach their children to "talk proper" were being thwarted by the plague of bizarre vowel sounds and tortured dipthongs emanating from the television.
Now, though, RP is thought to be an endangered species. The Times says that now the BBC and various other film producers are hunting desperately for young actresses with the middle-class accents required for some historical roles. Where's Henry Higgins when you need him?
