Table Of Content'Talking Proper'
The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol
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'Talking Proper'
The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol
LYNDA MUGGLESTONE
OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States
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© Lynda Mugglestone 1995; 2003
First edition published 1995 (paperback 1997)
Updated second edition first published 2003
First published in paperback 2007
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mugglestone, Lynda.
Talking proper: the rise of accent as social symbol / Lynda Mugglestone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. English language-Great Britain-Standardization. 2. English language-Spoken
English-Great Britain. 3. English language-Social aspects-Great Britain. 4. English
language–Variation–Great Britain. 5. English language-Accents and accentuation.
6. Speech and social status-Great Britain. 7. Great Britain-Social life and customs.
8. Social classes-Great Britain. I.Title.
PEIO74.7 .M84 2002 306.44'0941-dc21 2002032652
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddies Ltd., King's Lynn, Norfolk
ISBN 978-0-19-925061-5 (Hbk.) 978–0–19–925062–2 (Pbk.)
1 3 5 79 10 8 6 42
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vi
Preface to the Second Edition vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: 'A National Obsession' I
1. The Rise of a Standard 7
2. Accent as Social Symbol 50
3. The Practice of Prescription 77
4. /h/ and Other Symbols of the Social Divide 95
5. Ladylike Accents and the Feminine Proprieties of Speech 135
6. Literature and the Literate Speaker 173
7. Educating Accents 212
8. The Rise (and Fall?) of Received Pronunciation 258
Notes 295
References 334
Index 353
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I. I Advertisements for Thomas Sheridan's
Lectures in Oxford, 1759 18
1.2 Extract from John Walker's Critical
Pronouncing Dictionary (1791) 31
4.1 The title page of Hon. Henry H., Poor Letter H:
Its Use and Abuse (1854-66) 109
4.2 '"Evil communications," &c.' An illustration from
Punch, 6 September, 1873, p. 99 133
5.1 Histogram for (rj), showing differences based
on class and sex 168
8.1 'Regionally and the early BBC', Radio Times,
November 23rd, 1923, 309 271
8.2 'Popular misconceptions—A London announcer'.
An illustration from Punch, 19 April, 1939, p. 438 276
8.3 'Tony teaches Bill to speak Estuary English' 287
8.4 Diagrammatic relationships of Cockney, RP, and
Estuary English 288
8.5 Newspaper accounts of the reported shift in
the Queen's English, December 2000 289
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Within a few years of the first appearance of 'Talking Proper' in 1995, it
became clear that a new edition would be necessary, not least to take into
account the shifting nature of those debates which had come to surround the
issue of accent and pronunciation during the closing years of the twentieth
century as well as the first few years of the twenty-first. 'Estuary English', in
particular had emerged as a prominent area of comment in the press and
media, as well as in a variety of academic theses; similarly, controversies
about the 'Queen's English', and on-going changes within this, revealed the
nature of other issues which had come to be at stake. These and other areas
of discussion occupy the new Chapter 8 which has been able to place greater
emphasis on post-19OO changes in language attitudes and images of accent
than was possible in the previous edition. Throughout the volume, however,
chapters have been rewritten and revised, incorporating new material where
necessary, especially with reference to what individuals of the relevant peri-
ods thought and said about the nuances of speech. This biographical com-
ponent (from a wide range of sources) documents the changing image of
accent in ways which productively extend the frame of reference of the first
edition, mapping though the eyes (and ears) of ordinary speakers the shift-
ing contemporary consciousness of accent and its variously assumed pro-
prieties. For this paperback edition, an expanded section on language and
the early BBC has also been added into the final chapter.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks are due to Cambridge University Press for allowing me to use
data from Peter Trudgill, The Social Stratification of English in Norwich (CUP,
1974) and material by David Rosewarne from English Today. Thanks are
also due to the BBC for permission to quote from a number of unpublished
documents in the BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham, Reading,
and to the Bodleian Library Oxford, for permission to reproduce the
Advertisements for Thomas Sheridan's lectures on elocution in May 1759
(Folio 66 items 67(a) and 6y(b) entitled 'Oxford, May 25, 1759.
Mr Sheridan'. Shelfmark = Don. b. I2). Permission from Punch to use two
cartoons, 'Evil Communications' and 'Popular Misconceptions - A London
Announcer' is gratefully acknowledged. I am grateful also to the readers of
Oxford University Press for their many helpful comments, and to Professor
Eric Stanley in particular for his time and energy in discussing the various
drafts of this book.
Introduction: 'A National Obsession'
'ACCENT and Pronunciation must be diligently studied by the conversation-
alist. A person who uses vulgarisms will make but little way in good circles. ..
A proper accent gives importance to what you say, engages the respectful
attention of your hearer, and is your passport to new circles of acquaint-
ance'. So wrote the anonymous author of Talking and Debating (I856),1 a
manual of linguistic etiquette which, like many others published during the
late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sought to teach the social propri-
eties of linguistic usage to those who felt themselves disadvantaged in this
respect. Pronouncing dictionaries, works on elocution, tracts on speech and
articulation, and handbooks of social advice were regularly to unite over this
time in stressing the social import to be conveyed within the nuances of
speech. As Talking and Debating indicates, accent was itself to be regarded as
a marker of social acceptability, facilitating or impeding social advance; it
could secure deference or disrespect, acting as an image of 'worth' in a cul-
ture which, as many writers were to stress, was increasingly attuned to the
significance of phonetic propriety. 'No saying was ever truer than that good
breeding and good education are sooner discovered from the style of speak-
ing... than from any other means', the Reverend David Williams affirmed,2
similarly endorsing the importance of assimilation to the notionally 'correct'
forms of speech. Social and linguistic prescription commonly fused in these
contexts, their implications readily absorbed by writers such as George
Gissing or Thomas Hardy, not only in their novels but in their own linguis-
tic practices too. Gissing, for example, read Thomas Kington-Oliphant's The
Sources of Standard English, as well as George Craik's Manual of English
Language and Literature, eagerly absorbing their dictates on the shibboleths
and social markers to be found in the spoken English of the late nineteenth
century. George Bernard Shaw, 'a social downstart' as he termed himself,
devoted his attention to works on elocution in the British Museum, as well
as to books such as The Manners and Tone of Good Society with its subtitle
'Solecisms to be Avoided' and its advice that 'the mispronunciation of
certain surnames falls unpleasantly upon the educated ear, and argues
unfavourably as to the social position of the offender'.3 Thomas Hardy pur-
chased a copy of Nuttall's Standard Pronouncing Dictionary,4 along with
Mixing in Society: A Complete Manual of Manners which carefully informed
its readers that 'the best accent is undoubtedly that taught at Eton and
Oxford. One may be as awkward with the mouth as with the arms or legs'.5
Hardy's application in this context was, however, apparently to leave some-
thing to be desired, at least in terms of George Gissing's high standards in
Description:Talking Proper is a history of the rise and fall of the English accent as a badge of cultural, social, and class identity. Lynda Mugglestone traces the origins of the phenomenon in late eighteenth-century London, follows its history through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and charts its down
