Usage
Faced with the difficulty of defining RP, many writers have tried to distinguish between different sub-varieties: A.C.Gimson in earlier editions of his book proposed Conservative, General, and Advanced; Conservative RP refers to a traditional accent associated with older speakers with certain social backgrounds; General RP is often considered neutral regarding age, occupation, or lifestyle of the speaker; and Advanced RP refers to speech of a younger generation of speakers. Later editions (e.g. Gimson 2008) use General, Refined and Regional. Wells refers to "mainstream RP" and "U-RP"; he suggests that Gimson's categories of Conservative and Advanced RP referred to the U-RP of the old and young respectively. However, Wells stated that "It is difficult to separate stereotype from reality" with U-RP.
The modern style of RP is an accent often taught to non-native speakers learning British English. Non-RP Britons abroad may modify their pronunciation to something closer to Received Pronunciation in order to be better understood by people unfamiliar with the diversity of British accents. They may also modify their vocabulary and grammar to be closer to those of Standard English for the same reason. RP is often used as the standard for English in most books on general phonology and phonetics, and is represented in the pronunciation schemes of most dictionaries published in the United Kingdom.
Read more about this topic: Received Pronunciation
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