This book provides a full overview of what Geoff Lindsey terms ‘Contemporary British Standard Speech’. Despite the broad subject matter, it is clear, concise and readable, and only 100 pages long. High levels of phonetic detail are provided. It appears to be pitched as an expanded pronunciation guide, predominantly aimed at those teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL), seen in the notes throughout giving suggestions on acquiring the sounds as second language (L2) speakers. In discussing variation and recent changes, it also attracts the interest of sociolinguists.
The introductory chapter gives an excellent historical overview of RP [Received Pronunciation], situating its status within the colonial structure of the British Empire. It concludes by placing the end of RP at the end of the 20th century, with the demise of the British Empire, when the British standard was no longer enforced. From a social and educational perspective, this is a very clear point of change but leads to a disagreement in terminology with some using ‘modern RP’ or ‘advanced RP’ from the 1970s onwards (Gimson Reference Gimson1970: 88; Fabricius Reference Fabricius2000: 31), and others, including Lindsey in the rest of the book, using ‘Standard Southern British’ (SSB) or equivalent terms such as ‘Standard Southern British English’ (Deterding Reference Deterding1997) or Southern English (Ball Reference Ball1984) through the twentieth century. The different terminologies also reveal a disagreement over whether RP still exists; for Lindsey it ends after the end of the British Empire, but others disagree. Trudgill (Reference Trudgill2008: 4) explicitly states that while the ideology that created RP no longer has the same status within the British educational and social system, the accent still exists, with no fewer native speakers – a view that is still under debate (Fabricius Reference Fabricius, Calhoun, Escudero, Tabain and Warren2019, Halfacre & Khattab Reference Halfacre, Khattab, Calhoun, Escudero, Tabain and Warren2019). There is modern study of these suggested native speakers available, implying ongoing debate on RP’s status, for example, Fabricius (Reference Fabricius2007) and Badia Barrera (Reference Barrera Badia2015), which Lindsey has not fully engaged with. This issue is ongoing through the book; when accent features are reported on, it remains unclear who the speakers are.
The chapters walk us through all possible aspects of accent in six broad parts. Within these a systematic description of the phonology of SSB is given, including every part of the phonemic inventory and other phonetic phenomena.
Part I covers two factors common in public discussion surrounding accent change: the effect of writing and the effect of American English. The effect of writing results from increased literacy in the nineteenth century (from 50% to nearly 100% of the population). As it increased, the belief grew that written forms had more authority than spoken ones and pronunciations that had changed from the spelling returned to them, e.g. towards from /tɔːdz/ to /təˈwɔːdz/. To me, this effect seems logical, but considering that highly educated RP speakers were likely part of the 50% who were already literate, it is surprising that the demonstrated effect of writing is so strong. If the effect of spelling increases with increased literacy, the effect should be strongest in working class dialects, on speakers who were not previously literate, with less impact on highly educated speakers. The effect of American English on the accent is smaller (the dominant changes being lexical or idiomatic). It is acknowledged that many of the sound changes seen in British English do bring the accent closer to American English, though there is no discussion as to how and it is rarely mentioned in later chapters.
Parts II and III focus on vowel and consonant changes from RP to contemporary speech. The features covered are often sound changes that have been studied, or at least observed, by sociolinguists but have not been brought together systematically (e.g. the anti-clockwise vowel shift is discussed in Fabricius Reference Fabricius, Calhoun, Escudero, Tabain and Warren2019). The vowel changes are presented in context of Chapter 4, which shows a ‘large-scale “anti-clockwise” shift’ (p. 17), where the vowels of the accent have as a whole moved around the vowel space, followed by chapters on various diphthongal and monophthongal changes. An impressive feature of the book is the way that the sound changes are not presented in isolation but brought together in coherent description of movement within the vowel space (the anti-clockwise change in Chapter 4) or generalisations of disappearance of groups (the decline of centring diphthongs discussed in Chapter 13 and comparing /l/ vocalisation to loss of rhoticity in Chapter 20).
Chapter 5 is ‘FLEECE, GOOSE and other diphthongs’ (where fleece and goose are used to exemplify the vowel sounds found in them), which even as a title may be surprising to many readers who are used to thinking of fleece and goose as monophthongal /iː/ and /uː/. Lindsey brings to light a long known but little discussed feature of the English long vowels, that they have diphthongal qualities, including an off-glide, making them [i:j] and [u:w], respectively. This feature is then used to phonologically group them with the other English diphthongs (face, price, choice, mouth, and goat) as a ‘natural class’, sharing phonetic properties such as smoothing (discussed further in Chapter 12), pre-fortis clipping, the inability to be followed by a linking-/r/ and the ability to be followed by another vowel (e.g. fleeing). These properties, along with the scenario that arises if the diphthongs in words such as fly are [aɪ], allowing a lax vowel word-finally, which cannot occur in SSB, are combined to defend transcriptions ending in a glide. This re-conception leads to transcriptions such as, fleece[ij] and price[ɑj] (full table on p. 24), and taking notice of it could have impact on further study of variation and change within the English vowel system.
Chapter 6 covers goat-, goose-, and foot-backing before dark /l/, a phenomenon specific to RP/SSB because, unlike many other accents, the fronting of these vowels was unaffected by the following dark /l/ environment. Subsequently, these vowels have backed and caused various near/possible mergers. The backed goat vowel is more like, or sometimes replaced with, the lot vowel. Lindsey suggests that Goose-backing causes a merger with the thought vowel in some younger speakers, e.g. causing the pair pool and Paul to sound identical, as can foot-backing, e.g. pool, Paul, pull. Lot replacement is continued in Chapter 7, where it is shown to have replaced the thought vowel in many words, often those with a following dark /l/ such as false[fɒłs] and salt[sɒłt].
Chapter 8 discusses the kit and happy vowels. The kit vowel, /ɪ/, was used in many contexts in the RP of the 20th century, whereas now it only occurs pre-consonantally; in other contexts, e.g. word-finally (the happy context) has been replaced with /iː/. Chapter 9 also shows that the foot vowel is also no longer found in various contexts, including, word-finally, before a vowel, or as the glide of goat and mouth. The changes in possible contexts of kit and foot reflect the elimination of a peculiarity of RP: most other English accents do not allow lax vowels before another vowel. Kit and foot in weak contexts are replaced with schwa, which is further discussed in Chapter 10, suggesting a weak vowel merger.
Chapter 11 handles the well-known trap–bath–palm distinctions. This split is covered in detail by Wells (Reference Wells1982b), but Lindsey discusses social changes; the trap vowel is now more universally accepted, and hence ‘bath-broadening’ is less of a priority for learners of English.
Chapters 12 and 13 cover more diphthong features. Broadly, the price diphthong has backed, and the mouth diphthong has fronted, with the former taking part in the anti-clockwise shift, discussed in Chapter 4. Both changes bring SSB closer to working class London Englishes. The centring diphthongs have declined since the 20th century, shifting to more monophthongal pronunciations. These diphthongs, identified by Wells (Reference Wells1982a) in the lexical sets force, cure, square and near, have been gradually declining in use. The replacement of force (/ɔə/) and cure (/ʊə/) by the thought monophthong [ɔː] (also found in north) began during the 20th century. The book is unclear on the timing between the two sets but implies that the force set moved earlier and more homogenously, than the cure set, which has been moving word by word. Some earlier changes in the cure set are poor, sure and your and later changes include mourn, tourist and cure. In the cure set the change has not been homogenous: many speakers use a centre monophthong, [ɵː], rather than the back one, [ɔː], particularly in contexts followed by /r/. Square (/eə/) has also monophthongised to [ɛː], which is of the same quality as the dress vowel (/ɛ/). Near (/ɪə/) has undergone a longer process historically. The onset tensed decades ago (to me, this could suggest a process parallel with kit/happy – Chapter 8 – which Lindsey does not comment on), and then a smoothing process occurred resulting in a long vowel, [ɪː]. A frequency effect is suggested here, whereby the long vowel is established in many speakers in the frequent words near and year but only in younger speakers in other words, such as clear and idea.
In the first half of Chapter 13, occasional comments about individual vowels are given, for example, ‘[p]honemically these [vowels] might be analysed as forms of the goose vowel’ (p. 48), without further comment on how the vowel space is changing, and whether mergers are occurring. However, Chapter 13 concludes with an exceptional reanalysis of the entire long/open vowel system of both original RP and SSB, explaining how the vowel changes seen in the preceding chapters are systematic. This section brings together much of the previous analysis so clearly that it warrants a chapter of its own, either at the beginning or the end of Part II, with extensive signposting in the other chapters to demonstrate the systematic nature of the changes.
The consonants section, Part III, shows broadly that many consonant changes are becoming more common, but are not yet considered standard. Chapter 14 introduces aspiration and affrication. The contexts in which aspiration of voiceless stops (/p t k/) have expanded, from only occurring in stressed syllables (e.g. the /k/ in the first syllable of carpet) to being found in most contexts (e.g. the /p/ in the second syllable of carpet). These contexts have a longer voice onset time (VOT) than in languages such as French or Spanish, and are noted as important for learners to acquire. The only context in which aspiration is not present is following a fricative in the onset, for example, stick. When in this context, the stops have such a short VOT that they sound like their voiced counterparts /b d g/.
Chapter 15 covers the palatalization, of the consonant clusters /tj/ and /dj/ as in tune and dune to [tʃ] and [dʒ]. RP already had this feature in some words, e.g. soldier, picture, but in others it was stigmatised. It is now widespread. RP had another set of clusters with an alveolar consonant and yod, /sj/ and /zj/. These behaved differently and, instead, in word-initial position have been simplified to /s/ and /z/, e.g. suit. Word-medially, e.g. in assume, some speakers have coalesced the cluster to /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ ([əʃuːm]) but many retain it. This discussion is continued in Chapter 16, where the effect of affricates followed by /r/ are considered; /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are now able to cluster with /r/ (e.g. trip and drip are [tʃɹɪp] and [dʒɹɪp]).
Chapter 17 describes the increasing use of an epenthetic plosive between a nasal and a fricative (/ns/ becomes [nts]), leading to prince and prints being homophones. Another example of insertion is seen in Chapter 18, where syllabic consonants (e.g. little as [ˈlɪtl̩] and button as [ˈbʊtn̩]) are giving way to insertion of an unstressed vowel ([ˈlɪtəl] and [ˈbʊtən]).
Chapter 19 starts with a section on features untypical of RP but commen in Cockney, such as the glottal stop, which has become standard before consonants (e.g. football[fʊtbɔł ∼ fʊʔbɔł]), noted also in Fabricius (Reference Fabricius2002). Lindsey’s observation of these changes conforms to Trudgill’s (Reference Trudgill2008) assertion that despite its non-regionality, most changes in RP come from south-eastern accents.
Chapter 20 draws a parallel between /l/-vocalisation and /r/-loss, or rhoticity loss. /l/ vocalisation (to [w] or [ʊ]) in coda position was common in Cockney but RP only darkened (velarised) to [ł]. In SSB, /l/-vocalisation is becoming more common. The interesting phonological note is that /l/-vocalisation occurs in the same contexts as /r/ was lost, and these two sounds have phonological parallels implying that the system could be heading in the same direction. For a learner of English, it is still best to learn the light and dark sounds but a vocalised sound is now less likely to be considered ‘wrong’, demonstrating the increased variation in what is considered standard English, as proposed by Jenkins (Reference Jenkins2006) and others.
Chapter 21 briefly covers G- and H-dropping, i.e. the realisation of the weak ending -ing /ɪŊ/ as [ɪn] and the loss of /h/ at the beginning of words (e.g. hit[hɪt] ∼ [ɪt]. The [ɪn] variant is more common than it used to be but still rare in formal settings. /h/-loss cannot be considered a feature of SSB and is in fact becoming less common in London Englishes. Chapter 22 shows a similar situation with TH-fronting, i.e. the replacement of interdental fricatives with labio-dental ones (e.g. think[ÐɪŊk] ∼ [fɪŊk]), where the feature is far more common but Lindsey’s opinion is that it cannot yet be considered standard.
Part IV is brief, with two chapters stress. Chapter 23 outlines the move towards alternating stress in multi-syllabic words such as formidable and comparable, and Chapter 24 discusses leftward stress movement in words such as cigarette and magazine, stating that it is likely due to influence from American Englishes.
Part V covers connected speech. In RP, linking-/r/ (an [ɹ] produced between vowels where it exists in the underlying form, e.g. car and as [kɑɹ Ænd]) was acceptable but intrusive-/r/ ([ɹ] between vowels where it is not underlyingly present, e.g. saw in as [sɔɹ ɪn]) was to be avoided. However, intrusive-/r/ could be heard in RP speakers many decades back and the main change today is in acceptability. Another linking feature heard in modern standard speech is ‘hard attack’, a glottal stop at the beginning of word-initial vowels. This has always been used for emphasis and separation but is becoming more common and can be seen in a change in variation of prepositions and articles. The before a vowel was usually [Ðiː] in RP whereas now the pre-consonantal form [Ðə] is seen before vowels with hard attack. The final feature of connected speech discussed is vocal fry, or creaky voice. As I, and readers, would expect from recent popular and academic discussion (e.g. Yuasa Reference Yuasa2010), Lindsey shows that vocal fry is now often found in utterance-final position in young female speakers. However, Lindsey emphasises that it was clearly a feature of older male RP speakers. The change in popular perception to a negative view of vocal fry is largely ageist and sexist. While it exists in SSB, it is not common and, in Lindsey’s opinion, there is no need for a learner to attempt to imitate it.
Finally, Part VI covers intonation – a less studied aspect of RP (and related accents) – highlighting that the greatest change has been in the aspect of contour, with phrasing and accentuation remaining relatively stable. Many of the changes covered, while subtle at times, are important for EFL learners learn because the older patterns, as described in O’Connor & Arnold (Reference O’Connor and Arnold1973), can sound old fashioned and often patronising. Lindsey states that the most significant change (both in volume and importance) from RP intonation is in Yes–No questions. The majority were realised with what O’Connor and Arnold call The Low Bounce, whereas using this pattern now could be heard as ‘talking down’ to the hearer. The more common pattern begins with high level pre-nuclear pitch but ends in a Fall-Rise nuclear tone. The final chapter is on the phenomenon commonly known as ‘Uptalk’ (High Rising Terminal – the increase in pitch towards the end of a sentence), which has recently attracted much media and academic attention (Warren Reference Warren2016). Uptalk existed in RP in some contexts but its use has spread to requesting acknowledgement of a statement in a conversation or occasionally in teaching-related contexts.
Through the summer of 2019, this book was referenced by sociolinguists at various conferences. While of considerable interest to sociolinguists, the methodology, particularly the impressionistic approach to data collection, does not seem to be in parallel with modern sociolinguistic study, which tends towards carefully selected speaker groups and quantitative data. Therefore, those of us who are sociolinguists need to evaluate Lindsey’s findings within our research framework, particularly when comparing them to other sociolinguistic studies. However, as discussed by Jenkins (Reference Jenkins2006) and others, English as a second language and as a lingua franca is constantly growing, shifting the use of and need for a ‘standard’. The detail and clarity that Lindsey provides mean that this text will undoubtedly be of great use to phoneticians, EFL teachers/learners and those looking for a reference of contemporary standard British English that will be broadly understood and accepted. Though it is a little vague regarding what the definition and source of this standard is, the detail and clarity of the phonetic descriptions is outstanding, and the accessible and readable format – particularly the ‘in brief’ summaries at the beginning of each chapter – should make it a staple of EFL classrooms.
