Varieties of English are as old as the language itself. In fact the idea of a correct or properes

of English way to speak is surprisingly recent. There is suck and idea of course; it is often

referred to as The Queen’s English, BBC English, or Oxford English or Public School

English.

Public school English is barely a hundred years old. It first echoed round the playing fields

of schools like Eton, Harrow and Winchester. In Victorian English these boarding schools

took boys from many backgrounds and gave them the same accent.

SIR RANDOLPH QUIRK àYou had a kind of unnatural segregation of a subject of people

of the country the very people who are going to become the most powerful because of their

position of power they were the basis of imitation. They were eminent and eminently

imitable, as it were. The presumed superiority of this accent lingers.

Research in Britain shows that people using this accent are thought more intelligent, more

trustworthy, even better looking. Its influence is declining but the inculcation of public

school English still goes in schools like Winchester.

Boy 1: I think anyone who does have a particularly fringe accent who is right on the

borders, would firstly be sort of persuaded gradually to conform with everyone else.

And if he didn’t he’d be ostracized, put out and people would go out of their way to be

unpleasant to him, I think.

Boy 2: When I first came here I had a working-class accent and thus,

I was, sort of, after a while, I was ridiculed but you gradually change your accent so

that dies away.

DR. ROBERT BURCHFIELD à Undoubtedly, the English public schools have set and

enormous influence on the dissemination of one variety of English what I call the super

dialect, that is, Received Standard, or BBC English, or public school English, whatever you

call it but it’s only spoken by one if fifty people in this country, something of that sort.

The invention of the wireless turned public school English into BBC English. The radio did

for the spoken language what printing had done for the written. Listeners could hear for the

first time a definitive English speech the voice of information, culture, and the West End

stage in accents that now seem as outdated as clothes.

BBC RECORDING àFog is getting thicker. It’s terrifying. Don’t worry. I know every inch

of the river.

What’s that?

It’s gulls. We’ve disturbed them.

The rest at night on the barges. Better keep closer to the bank.

They’ll give us away.

Why do you hesitate?

I’m not hesitating. He deserves to die!

The immaculate crime!

WW II was the finest hour for BBC English, the voice of Britain resounding with authority

and defiance. All cinemas, theatres and other places of entertainment are to be closed

immediately until further notice.

DR. ROBERT BURCHFIELD à When the war broke out, I happened to be in Wellington,

New Zealand. I heard Neville Chamberlain speak but the announcer to me was just as

important as Neville Chamberlain, which really is some quite extraordinary equation.

This is Pat Butler calling British Forces in Gibraltar.

This is Marjory Alderson calling British Forces in Indian and Ceylon.

This is Michael Brook calling Malta.

They used to stand alone like some great isolated supreme power of language, that what it

said was both correctly said and was the truth.