Eastury English and Cockney features in younger generation royals’ Speech

Abstract

Received Pronunciation exemplified through the speakers of the upper strata accepted alteration by adapting innovative phonetic elements coming from regional accents eventually resulting in a semi-formal variant or an updated RP form. Consonantal phonetic features of Estuary English and Cockney varieties such as glottal stop, l-vocalization, yod-coalescence, th-fronting and h-dropping were investigated in personal topic-based interviews delivered by Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate Middleton. The analyzed data provided evidence of regional consonantal features discovered in speeches delivered by younger generation royals. The most frequently observed regional feature in the spoken royal discourse was glottal stop with its distribution 15.27%. Other regional features were also present in the phonetic analysis with th-fronting amounting to 1.42%, l-vocalization amounting to 1.26%, yod-coalescence instances comprised 0.32% and the realization of h-dropping was discovered only once amounting to 0.01% of the analyzed data. Accordingly, the greatest distribution of regional features was discovered in Prince Harry’s speeches comprising 10.26% of RP deviation. Prince William’s analyzed speeches exhibited 6.64% regional realization and Kate’s Middleton utterance contained the minimum distribution of RP deviation amounting to 1.38%. The analysis of the data revealed that non-standard Estuary English and Cockney consonantal features discovered in a spoken language of younger generation royals’ contribute to sound accommodation strategy, the ease of articulation and social image protection; therefore, the results of the research suggest dynamicity within the continuum of RP.