Changes In RP Monophthongs

Sociophonetics studies socially conditioned phonetic variations, with phonetic variationas researching subject and employing the method in experimental phonetics. This paper triesto study the vowel changes in Received Pronunciation in the social environment in the recent50years from the1960s to the1980s and to the2010s, based on previous English phoneticchange theories and empirical researches.This study employs the method of acoustic analysis to conduct monophthongal analysisin RP. The recording speeches from Eliza, Thatcher and Queen ElizabethⅡserve as therepresentative materials for the1960s,1980s and2010s respectively. PRAAT is used to gainthe first and second Formant Frequencies data of English monophthongs in the continuousspeeches. And the MATLAB is used to draw pictures of monophthongal positions for eachperson based on those data and values. The comparisons are conducted first among the threesubjects, and then with two standards—Deterding s1997RP Standard and JamesHillenbrand s1995American English Standard, attempting to figure out the changingcharacteristics and trend of vowels in RP and to see the present situation of the vowels inBritish English. At last, the paper will have a further study on the possible reasons leading tothe change.The results of the experiment are as followed: on the whole, vowel changes withvertical compression, which means the openness of the lax vowels becomes small. And from1960s to1980s, there is an obvious centralized trend horizontally for the lax vowels. Almostall of the front vowels turn backward in Thatcher s data. For the specific characteristics, thereis little change of/i/; the F1value for/e/becomes smaller and closer to/i/, the vertical spacebetween them is shortened; the F1value for//is also smaller, thus the tongue raises higher;the F2value for/u/in Elizabeth Ⅱcelebrating her Diamond Jubilee speech is quite large, thusthe pronunciation position becomes fronted; the F2value for//also becomes smaller, thusthe pronunciation position becomes more back, having distinct difference from/u/; And fromthe comparison study with RP and GA, it shows RP changes over time towards SSB basically,but some of these changes may come from American English, and this influence need further test.Through the study of vowel changes in RP from Eliza, Thatcher and Elizabeth Ⅱ, thispaper contributes new data to the English phonetic change study and then exploresunderlying reasons causing those changes, the idea of influence from American English is putforward and gets tested.