explained below, judgments of this kind are based not on linguistic facts, but on socio-economic misjudgments or prejudices. For many years, Standard English has been closely linked to a particular accent, the so-called RP (Received Pronunciation). This upper-class kind of accent began to been utilized in the most famous English fee-paying or Public schools at the end of the nineteenth century. From then on, RP came to be viewed as the best English accent, that is, the accent everyone should master or aim at achieving. Due to its social and educational prestige, RP is also referred to as The Queen s English or even BBC English (in the early years of broadcasting it was very rare to hear any other accents on the BBC). Surprising though it may seem, this social accent is not necessarily linked to Standard English, which can be spoken with any regional accent. Despite the widespread foreign (and ESL) belief that everyone in England speaks Standard English with an RP pronunciation, it should be pointed out that according to Melchers & Shaw, "only 12 per cent of the population of England are speakers of Standard English ; nine per cent speak Standard English with a regional accent [7; 47]. What these figures suggest is, first and foremost, that the number of speakers of Standard English in England is very small, and secondly, that only 3% of the total population of England speak Standard English with an RP accent. All things considered, it is paramount that we end this section by examining the interrelationship between geographical variation and social variation in England. In order to fulfill this purpose, we shall refer to Trudgill s pyramidal illustration of these issues. [8; 30-3] already noted, Standard English is the language variety employed by those who have received a good education; hence, educated middle and upper classes. Since Standard English is not a fully homogeneous variety, it is not at all striking to find some small regional differences among educated speakers of this dialect. Nevertheless, as we proceed downwards in the social scale, we will find that regional differences among speakers increase gradually (precisely for this reason, some working-class dialects are so localized geographically and so difficult to understand). Concerning accent, we may observe that the rather flattened top of the dialectal pyramid turns into a clearly pointed top or peak. This change in shape may be explained by reference to the unique position of the RP accent; it is such a prestigious and educated accent that regional variation among those who use it (mainly upper class people) is non-existent.
2. Territorial and social dialects of Britain
.1 Classification of the modern territorial dialects
of modern English regional dialects presents serious difficulti...
