U and Non-U: An Essay in Sociological Linguistics

Upper-class English in Natural and Audiovisual Dialogue

“…Instead, in other cases like PRICE and MOUTH, the phenomenon of 'smoothing' may occur in U-RP, namely the monophthonging process of /aɪ, aʊ/ into [a:], which, as mentioned -although not widely explored -by Wells, the upper-class speech shares with Cockney (1998, 239). Ross (1959) also confirms that "some U-speakers pronounce tyre and tar identically (and so for many other words, such as fire -even going to the length of making lion rhyme with barn)" (ibid., 17).…”

“…[əʊtel] (Wells 1998, 255); this is also confirmed by Ross (1959), who adds it is also to be considered 'U' to drop /h/ in 'humour ' (ibid., 17). The same lack of /h/ applies to the personal pronouns 'he,' 'his,' 'him,' 'her,' when in post-pausal position (e.g., 'tell him' [telɪm]), but Wells explains that these are not to be considered cases of H-dropping because the h-syllables are not stressed; on the contrary, the insertion of /h/ in cases similar to the example provided can be found in utterances by "some middle-class speakers, perhaps in a genteel anxiety not to do something so vulgar as dropping an /h/" (ibid.…”

“…Chapter 1 was then dedicated to the delineation of a complete description of upper-class English in every linguistic aspect through the collection of sparse insights on the topic from both academic (Wells 1992 andWales 1994;Harrington et al 2000;Fabricius 2007;Ranzato 2018;Richards 2018) and non-academic literature (Mitford 1949;Ross 1959;Fox 2004;Taggart 2010;. What resulted from this review is that the distinguishing features of the English spoken by upper-class people in Britain are:…”

“…Not only the duration of the stress, but also the variation of its position in some words can serve to distinguish a 'U' from a 'non-U' speaker, as pointed out by Ross (1959); for instance, he mentions that 'temporarily' and 'interesting' are pronounced with an accented first vowel by upper-class speakers, thus ['tɜmprərəlɪ, 'ɪntrəstɪn], causing a reduction of the number of the syllables compared to the more-widely-spread forms 'temporàrily ' and 'interèsting' (ibid., 16, but see also Wales 1994, 4).…”

“…Before dealing with the lexical and morpho-syntactic characteristics of upper-class English, a summative table containing the main acoustic features of this accent is provided, building especially on Wells's insights on the topic (1992 and 1998) but also partially on Ross (1959), Wales (1994), Harrington et al (2000), Fabricius (2007), Mugglestone (2007), Cruttenden (2014, , Richards (2018)…”