What the Queen's English revealed about a changing world

2022年09月21日

今日はエリザベス女王二世の話し方について学んでいきましょう。(English) Today we will learn how Queen Elizabeth II speaks.

What the Queen's English revealed about a changing world

Queen Elizabeth II's long reign meant that she saw many changes in the world around her, from rationing to social media and a global pandemic.

After 70 years on the throne, the Queen left a unique and precious legacy that changed with the times: her voice, captured by decades of recording.

Her Majesty's distinctive accent, delivered through public speeches, radio, television, and the Internet, provides a unique insight into how the world changed during her long reign and within it.

Millions worldwide have watched and listened to the late Queen's broadcast on her 21st birthday in 1947.

At the time, she was still a princess but already determined to pledge to her people: "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether long or short, shall be devoted to your service."

Leap forward to the 21st Century and her final Christmas broadcast, where she poignantly remembered her late husband and offered warm words to a country traumatized by the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Although it's a time of great happiness and good cheer for many, Christmas can be hard for those who have lost loved ones. This year, especially, I understand why," she said.

The difference between these two recordings is plain, even to the untrained ear.

They allow scientists to understand how accents evolve and how social, cultural, and technological developments influence them.

Received Pronunciation - of which the Queen was a speaker - and its changes from 1950-1980 are especially interesting because of the tremendous social changes and an increasing mixture of social classes in England in the 60s and 70s.

Received Pronunciation has been considered the standard British English accent since the late 19th Century.

It is a form of Pronunciation associated with the aristocracy, the Royal Family, the British establishment, and stuffy wartime BBC announcements.

The Queen's way of speaking became a hallmark of Received Pronunciation.

Harrington has analyzed the Christmas broadcasts of Queen Elizabeth II.

Their research has helped to challenge the idea that our accents remain broadly stable once we reach adulthood. Instead, it appears they are undergoing constant change.

The factors that shape a human voice and accent over a lifespan fall into two domains.

Some changes happen simply because of physiological processes - our vocal tract changes shape as we age while our vocal cords grow thinner and stiffer the older we get.

This can lead to a voice becoming higher in pitch, "reedy" and shaky-sounding, but in some women, their vocal folds can thicken, leading to a lowering of pitch.

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Analysis of the Queen's broadcasts reveals that in the first few decades of her reign, the Queen's accent became less distinctively upper-class and somewhat more mainstream.

Harrington's most recent analysis: in the final years of the Queen's life, her accent reverted to being more similar to how she spoke in her youth.

As a young woman in the 1950s, the Queen had a distinctive upper-class accent.

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One study by Harrington found that a small group of researchers in Antarctica from different areas - Iceland, Germany, northwest US, and various parts of the UK - began to develop embryonic signs of a familiar accent after spending several months together in close contact.

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It seems likely then that at least some of the changes to the Queen's accent were simply a reflection of the people she came into contact with.

The Queen perhaps conversed with more middle-class speakers.

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Margaret Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, tried hard to disguise her middle-class upbringing in Lincolnshire, in the East Midlands of England.

Numerous prime ministers also spoke with what is known as Estuary English.

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Indeed, some research suggests our accents can be subtly influenced by the television we watch.

Accents also still carry many hidden associations that prejudice how we see the people who speak with them.

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In Britain, for example, people who speak with northern English accents can be seen as less well educated or less intelligent solely due to biases about how they communicate.

Similar negative prejudices have been found to surround those who speak with a southern accent in the US.

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Received Pronunciation, by contrast, has consistently been regarded, within the UK at least, as the most "prestigious" English accent, according to surveys conducted in 1970 and again in 2005.

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So, could the Queen have deliberately changed her speaking style to alter how people perceived her, softening her Received Pronunciation to make herself sound less formal and more approachable?

Harrington himself may raise in one of his early studies on the Queen's accent.

Still, he believes the gradual shift in her accent over several decades suggests the changes were unconscious.

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There were other, perhaps more deliberate, changes to the language the Queen used during her reign.

According to one analysis, the vocabulary she used became more diverse during her first decade on the throne.

The researchers behind the study speculate that this may have helped her build a closer rapport with her people during the difficult post-war period.

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She appears to have adapted her vocabulary to reflect the shifting sensitivities around race, religion, gender, and health.

She also extensively used inclusive and unifying language to appeal to her audience.

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From around 1990, after age 64, the Queen's vowels began to move back towards being more like those she used in the 1950s.

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Previously, it was assumed that the significant changes in our voice happened in childhood and adolescence, after which one's accent was thought to be pretty fixed.

But now, research shows that our voice is more flexible than we might think and that we can still modify it substantially throughout our lives and even in old age.

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This flexibility has been found not just in the voice of Queen Elizabeth II but in those of other influential women worldwide and the broader population.

For example, a study investigating speeches by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands between the ages of 42 and 74 found that overall, she spoke faster in the later lessons.

This reflected the broader change among Dutch speakers, whose speech had generally sped up.

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Also, from around 1990, after age 64, the Queen's vowels began to move back towards being more like those she used in the 1950s.

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Despite the social changes around the Queen throughout her long reign, these later shifts in her accent are slightly puzzling.

This kind of reversion has been found in several different circumstances.

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For bilingual speakers, aging or damage caused by a stroke can generate a return to their native language or accent.

It can also happen with regional accents within one's native language, from British to American English.

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One explanation for the Queen's slight return to the vowels of her youth could be how our memories work as we age, suggests Harrington.

Older pronunciations of words may be lodged more deeply in our memory and so entrenched.

Yet, at the same time, our ability to draw on more recent interactions with the people around us declines as we age.

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The pull of the past could also have played a role.

Reminiscing or reflecting on events from earlier in her life, which the Queen often did in her later speeches, could also lead to the use of older pronunciations related to those memories.

Her passing marks the end of an era and the end of a long, unbroken record of change reflected in the way she spoke.

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"I greatly admire Queen Elizabeth II in so many ways," says Harrington.

"And not least because of her commitment to giving up a large part of her Christmas Day for a live public address to the nation and millions worldwide every year without interruption for seven decades."

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In his first public speech after ascending to the throne, King Charles III thanked his "darling Mama," just as the Queen had remembered her "beloved father" in her own Christmas broadcast as a young woman all those decades ago.

It remains to be seen how the royal accent will continue to evolve as he begins his reign.

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Queen Elizabeth II became Queen at the young age of 25.

She learned a lot of vocabulary in her first decade and was close to her people after the war.

She then changed from talking to many ordinary people to an average accent.

Then, she returned to her old accent when she got older.

This was because she could no longer learn new accents quickly and had to reflect on past speeches and speaking styles.

It was probably both conscious and unconscious.

In any case, it must have been an excellent achievement for her.

Take my case, for example.

I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.

I never lived anywhere else until I got married.

But I have worked for a company in Tokushima, Shikoku.

I learned how to deal with demanding customers in their language.

And I lived in Ibaraki Prefecture first.

I didn't understand the language at all.

Not only the accents but also each word was different.

Next, I moved to Mie Prefecture.

I had to learn a different language again.

The Tokyo dialect is a familiar language to me.

However, now that I am also learning English, I find it challenging to find a language that is easy for everyone to understand.

After all, the way you speak expresses your personality, so I think it is important to be easy to understand, friendly, and open.