Communication: Received Pronunciation and Third World

Abstract

It is argued that British Received Pronunciation (RP) is an undesirable & probably unattainable model of pronunciation for use in teaching Eng in Third World countries. It is suggested that a "communicative" model, rather than the "normative" model of RP, would be better suited to this context, as it uses a measure of success of the transaction between two participants. The role of "pleasant voice" characteristics in communication is discussed. Four phonetic correlates of pleasant voice quality are outlined: volume, pitch, duration, & tempo. B. Annesser Murray.