Final Assessment Questions on “Theoretical phonetics” Card-1 Connection of Phonetics with Other Sciences

Card-6
1.Types and styles of pronunciation. L.V. Shcherba wrote of the need to distinguish a great variety of styles of speech, in accordance with the great variety of different social occasions and situations, but for the sake of simplicity he suggested that only two styles of pronunciation should be distinguished: (1) colloquial style characteristic of people's quiet talk, and (2) full style, which we use when we want to make our speech especially distinct and, for this purpose, clearly articulate all the syllables of each word. The other way of classifying phonetic styles is suggested by J.A. Dubovsky who discriminates the following five styles: informal ordinary, formal neutral, formal official, informal familiar, and declamatory. The division is based on different degrees of formality or rather familiarity between the speaker and the listener.
2.Types of received pronunciation.
RP could be described as the Standard pronunciation of Standard British English. For example, it is the pronunciation used in British dictionaries and is the pronunciation taught to Foreigners in English books published by Oxford, Cambridge and other publishers. This does not mean that is any better or worse than other kind of English. Only a small number of people in Britain have an RP accent but as it is the English spoken by the Royal Family and many members of the nobility and the upper classes and was used by the BBC for many years. Like any other accent, RP has different varieties. Conservative, mainstream and advanced. Conservative RP and advanced are mainly spoken by elderly and young speakers of RP respectively. RP could be described as the Standard pronunciation of Standard British English. For example, it is the pronunciation used in British dictionaries and is the pronunciation taught to Foreigners in English books published by Oxford, Cambridge and other major British publishers. This does not mean that is any better or worse than other kind of English. Only a small number of people in Britain have an RP accent but as it is the English spoken by the Royal Family and many members of the nobility and the upper classes and was used almost exclusively by the BBC for many years, it has gained a certain prestige. That preeminence of RP has only begun to begun to be challenged seriously since the sixties. Like any other accent, RP has different varieties. Conservative, mainstream and advanced. Conservative RP and advanced are mainly spoken by elderly and young speakers of RP respectively. We must take into account that accents do not exist independently of the people who speak them so each person we might identify as an RP speaker will speak slightly differently from any other.