Posh?

Having so many visitors from all around the world here, one hears accented English of all types and flavours. I often mull over this question of accent, as I'm always reminded of a chap that I knew for a while some forty-some years ago, with whom I worked in the building trade locally. His name was Ian Dickson, and he was educated at a public-school, his parents being wealthy. He spoke in that approximation of an 'unaccented' Standard English commonly referred to as RP; 'Received Pronunciation': the universally and traditionally accepted lingua-phone of the privileged and educated classes. Except that neither linguistically nor sociologically does this make any real sense. Some of those that speak in RP might consider themselves to exist as part of a long and storied familial lineage spanning many decades or centuries, passed down to them ultimately, in many cases, by some divine right of succession. How strange that they choose to converse in a manner not passed down through their clan line, but rather through the stilted tongue of an acquired [received] voice. Were it not known that the entire artifice of RP is of relatively recent invention and coinage, driven by the upward mobility of eighteenth century mercantilism, one could be forgiven for imagining that these people were in some manner duped out of their true linguistic heritage by their schools and 'society'. Ian once told me that I spoke Standard English with an accent. I don't imagine for one minute he was speaking disparagingly - he was actually a very decent bloke - but, from a linguist's point of view in the twenty-first century, I would argue that so too did he...