Broadcasting and Spoken English

Extract

Among the discontents and grievances, real and imaginary, which help to fill the correspondence columns of newspapers, ‘B.B.C. English’ is a veteran. Those who complain usually make an assumption and a statement. They assume the existence of a type of spoken English with definable characteristics to which the term ‘B.B.C. English’ may be assigned. They state that this is an undesirable type of English and frequently, explicitly or implicitly, compare it unfavourably with their own. Critics range from the highly educated to the lunatic fringe. From whatever section of society they derive, they share strong feelings, often express themselves with vehement indignation, and accuse the B.B.C. of attempting to force millions of listeners into the strait-jacket of an accent which is in some way decadent. The adjectives used to describe it sometimes express a relation between the writer’s education, social position or home county and those of an imaginary person, the audible embodiment of the B.B.C.: ‘superior’, ‘lah-di-dah’, ‘snobbish’, ‘slipshod’, ‘Mayfair’, ‘Cockney’, ‘Oxford’, ‘drawling’, are examples of the words used to relieve real irritation. In an age when the niceties of language, spoken and written, command so little appreciation, so much emotion may seem surprising. I believe it is both natural and, in some degree, desirable. But I should not like to say why without examining the basic assumption that there is an accent called ‘B.B.C. English’.