-Estuary English is an English accent associated with South
East England, especially the area along the River Thames and Thames Estuary.
-Estuary English is a
study conducted by Catherine Watson in the 2000's. It is a study on the accent
associated with people from the south east of London; it is in-between RP and
cockney. -This this is an accent known by many people who learn English as a second language. Jonathan Harrington, Sallyanne Palethorpe and Catherine Watson, from Macquarie University in Sydney, (Australia) reported in the journal Nature that even the Queen is not immune to the rise of the estuarine English spoken by southerners.
-The researchers said: "The pronunciation of all languages changes subtly over time, mainly owing to the younger members of the community. What is unknown is whether older members unwittingly adapt their accent towards community changes.
- The study was of the queen’s accent during her Christmas message and has been analysed by the Australian university students since 1952. With the permission of Buckingham Palace, and the help of the BBC's sound archive, the researchers investigated the Queen's pronunciation and found an evolution towards the southern British accent which came about in the 2000’s.
-This means that in order to become more involved in the public and to sound more like the public she talks like the people from the south east of England rather than the RP she is typically known to speak. This is interesting as it shows that maybe she knows that isn’t that important compared to MP’s ect and therefore, in order to try and be involved with the public in a way talks to them and adapts her speech to correspond with the current time period and local dialect more than she might of used to as she may see it to be important to interact with the people of her county more than she has done before.
-Researchers say that the queen is trying to fit in with the classes of Zeitgeist. The Zeitgeist is the spirit of the age or spirit of the time and is the intellectual fashion or dominant school of thought that typifies and influences the culture of a particular period in time.
-This is important as it also shows that she is adapting her speech and language in order to communicate with her country she adapts her language to appear to be more relatable?
Recent research :- “(Harrington, Palethorpe and Watson 2000) into the changing forms of the pronunciation of certain vowels by H.M. the Queen in her Christmas messages between the 1950s and 1980s shows even this member of the Royal Family to be no sociolinguistic isolate. The forms and norms of RP inevitably drift, and as RPis influenced by the Southern British speech community” – from http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/23728/1/Fabricius_2002_EWW.pdf which expresses the ideas of modern RP adapting to become more like southern British English, spoken widely across the UK.
key points:
-RP - southern english
-queen apapted language over years in chriastmas message.
-research conducted by students from univeristy in sydney.
-from 1950-1980's
bibliography:
http://rudar.ruc.dk/bitstream/1800/23728/1/Fabricius_2002_EWW.pdf
http://filologia.uni.lodz.pl/hinton/harrington2000.pdf
https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/queen2.htm
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/12187912_Does_the_Queen_speak_the_Queen's_English
