In the United States, accent often betrays where an individual was raised and how much educated he has received. With the possible exception of the Southern drawl, however, regionalisms are seldom thought to be a sign of social class. American society may not be completely egalitarian, but at least our speech is. There is no “standard” American English. Things are different in England, however. There, speech is one of the most important ways of determining social class, even more important than wealth or education in the eyes of money.
There are a myriad of accents in England and many of them are regional in nature. The most prominent, however, are “Received Pronunciation” (AKA The Queen’s English), and Cockney English. Received Pronunciation represents what is thought to be “correct” way of speaking English and it is what is spoken by the Royal Family, the reporters of the British Broadcasting Agency, and the rest of Britain’s elite. Rather than being its own accent, however, it is considered the absence of accent or regionalism. Thus, even accents that are not strictly Cockney are usually considered inferior to RP English. That alone betrays the bias that English society (and those in foreign countries) have for RP English.
The other type of English accent with which many people around the world are familiar is Cockney English. Strictly speaking, Cockney English is the dialect of the working classes in London. It has become symbolic of the working class throughout England, however, and is commonly associated with criminals and the poor. This type of accent will be very familiar to anyone who has seen British gangster films like “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” or even the Disney movie “Mary Poppins.” There are many differences between it and Received Pronunciation English, but the most important is the prevalence of the glottal stop in Cockney English. This is the familiar phenomenon whereby the speaker does not pronounce certain letters, especially consonants like “t.”
In recent years, the two major accents of in Britain have started coming together a bit more than they did in the past. Many linguists now identify a new major accent called Estuary English which serves as a bridge between the two. As English society becomes more egalitarian, many people are adopting Estuary English as a type of middle ground when it comes to pronunciation. Lower classes use it to make themselves sound more sophisticated and shake the stigmatization of their Cockney accents while certain elites are adopting it in an effort to seem more in touch with the common people.
Of course, there are no hard definitions for these three categories and there are numerous variations upon them. Nevertheless, Received Pronunciation, Cockney English, and Estuary English are in widespread use and can be easily recognized even by many non-native English speakers. The sociological stereotypes that are associated with each speech pattern, however, remains distinctly British. Those stereotypes are weakening over time, but they still exist.
