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重点论文网    文科论文    英语论文    从女王口音变化看英国社会阶层的变迁
创建时间:03-24

从女王口音变化看英国社会阶层的变迁

An Analysis of the Changes of Social Stratum in England through the Changes of the Queen’s Accent 

Abstract: The Queen’s accent that Elizabeth II used is similar to the Oxford accent which is so-called the Upper-class English pronunciation. In the 1950s, the British had great class consciousness. Different accent represented different social status. But in the past 50 years, the Queen’s accent has gradually closing to the southern middle-class British pronunciation. This thesis lists and analyzes the change of Queen’s accent and the reasons in the past 50 years.. Meanwhile it concludes that the change is a reflection of the change of social stratum, particularly the change of middle class. The Queen changed her accent to adapt the change of social stratum, so that she can win her people’s support. She admits the equality and democracy by changing her accent.
Key Words: change; social stratum; Queen’s accent

从女王口音变化看英国社会阶层的变迁
摘  要:英国女王伊丽莎白二世原有的口音类似于牛津腔,是所谓英国上流社会的贵族英语发音。在20世纪50年代,英国人社会等级观念较重,不同口音代表了不同阶层的人。但近五十年来,女王口音日益接近于英国南部普通中层阶级大众。本文列举并分析了近五十年来女王口音的变化及其原因,并发现这种变化是英国社会阶级结构变化的一种折射,尤其是中产阶级阶层地位的变化。这也正是女王为适应社会阶层变化以及迎合大众人心所做出的改变。这个改变也是承认社会民主平等的一个表现。
关键词:变化;社会阶层;女王口音

 
CONTENTS
Introduction    1
1.    Background and Changes in Queen’s Accent    2
1.1 The Status of Queen’s Accent    2
1.1.1 Relation Between Accent and Social Stratum    2
1.1.2 The Status of RP and Other Accents    3
1.1.3 The Status of Queen’s Accent    5
1.2 Changes in Queen’s Accent    5
1.2.1 Changes of English Accent Recently    5
1.2.2 Changes of Queen’s Accent    6
1.3 The Process of the Change    7
1.3.1 Change from Above    7
1.3.2 Change from Below    8
2. Changes of British Stratum    9
2.1 Changes of Social Stratum    9
2.1.1 Changes of Middle Class Stratum    9
2.1.2 Changes of Concept of Social Stratum    10
2.1.3 Changes of Education Forms and Global Popularization    11
2.2 Reason of Changes in Queen’s Accent    12
2.2.1 Conscious Reason    12
2.2.2 Subconscious Reason    12
3. Significance of Changes in Queen’s Accent    12
3.1 Meanings to the Sociaty    12
3.2 Meanings to Herself    13
4. Conclusion    13

Acknowledgements………………...……………………………..….....15

Bibliography………………...………………………………...……...…16
 
Introduction
    50 years ago, the British had a strict division of social class. Intelligence, skill, and experience count for naught. The best way to run a major firm in British industry is to be born of the right people. In England this is class. If you’ve got good breeding, people will treat you with respect. Members of “lower” classes often have a greater class consciousness than do their “upper” class counterparts. However, this is not necessarily the case in societies where class hierarchy is a strict and deep tradition. Members of the English aristocracy, for example, were thoroughly aware of the privileges of their position and archly disdainful of their inferiors. 
Class system in England is a prejudice primarily based upon accent. Whenever a Briton meets another Briton he will base a library’s worth of prejudices on the stranger from the style of the first sentence uttered. Most people know there are hundreds of regional accents in this country. The regional aspect is of secondary importance, what you must do is to divide the regional accents into substrata of class. The Queen’s English (QE) is actually not the “proper form” of English, in that there is no correct form. However, it is the dialect of British English with the most prestige in many English-speaking countries, especially those with recent ties to England. 
It is never possible to make a simple statement about language variation and social class because other influential factors are involved, such as the sex of the speaker, and the formality of the situation. There is also an important interaction between social and regional factors, as illustrated below for British English. The two pyramids deal with differences of accent and dialect, and represent the relationship between “where” a speaker is, both socially (the vertical dimension) and geographically (the horizontal dimension). At the top are the speakers of the highest social class: they speak the standard dialect with very little regional variation. Also at the top are those who speak Received Pronunciation (RP), the educated accent which signals no regional information at all (within Britain). The further we move down the class scale, the more we encounter regional accent and dialect variation. And when we reach the lowest social class, we encounter the widest range of local accents and dialects.
Therefore, in the past decades, an accent has been sought after by many people in England who wanted to lose a regional accent that marked them as low-class or provincial.
Recently, researchers find that the Queen’s accent sounds slightly less aristocratic than it did 50 years ago by analyzing the Queen’s Christmas broadcast. It is close to the modern RP used by the southern middle-class British. It reflects that the concept of social class has changed, at least the Queen’s.

1. Background and Changes in Queen’s Accent
1.1 The Status of Queen’s Accent
A dialect is a variant of a language. English, as spoken in England, has some regional dialects and many regional accents. They can identify one’s social stratum by the accent. There are many accents that represent different social stratums, such as Cockney, Estuary English, Oxford accent, etc. We can see that the higher the social stratum one has, the more “standard” pronunciation she has.
1.1.1 Relation Between Accent and Social Stratum
Long before the days of 20th century linguistics and phonetics, English novelists, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, were observing the relationship between language and social class in Britain and using it as a basis for characterization and social comment.
Mrs. Yule’s speech was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation was not flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor, which brands as with hereditary baseness, still clung to her words, rendering futile such propriety of phrase as she owed to years of association with educated people. (George Gissing, 1891) .[2]
The best way to run a major firm in British industry is to be born of the right people. In England it’s class. The British had a strict division of social class 50 years ago. No matter you’re a black, Jewish, homosexual, or a dwarf with the intelligence of a waffle, if you’ve got good breeding, people will treat you with respect. 
Class system in England is a prejudice primarily based upon accent, whenever a Briton meets another Briton he will base a library’s worth of prejudices on the stranger from the style of the first sentence uttered. There are hundreds of regional accents in this country. The regional aspect is of secondary importance, what you must do is to divide the regional accents into substrata of class.
Class consciousness is the awareness of the existence of different socio-economic classes and, further, realization of the great impact that class has. Members of “lower” classes often have a greater class consciousness than do their “upper” class counterparts. However, this is not necessarily the case in societies where class hierarchy is a strict and deep tradition. Members of the English aristocracy, for example, were thoroughly aware of the privileges of their position and archly disdainful of their inferiors. 
 

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