[NOTE: I HAVE NOW ADDED NAMES OF SOME WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN DESCRIBED AS RP SPEAKERS. NOT EVERYONE WILL AGREE WITH THE CHOICES, AND THE SOURCES ARE NOT IMPECCABLE]
I don't want to keep coming back to the Wikipedia article on Received Pronunciation, but it's one of WP's most controversial topics and it gets a lot of attention (some of it unwelcome). What I am complaining about at the moment is the section on "Notable RP speakers", which has been there for years. The problem with this section is that all the speakers listed are male, with the exception that the reference to The British Royal Family necessarily includes some royal female speakers.
I could easily come up with a list of female speakers that I would consider to be speakers of RP as defined in this article, but I'm not going to. For a start, I don't believe in RP any more than I believe in Father Christmas. If I did believe in it, I wouldn't include the Royal Family as RP speakers. Finally, it's not possible just to add new names to the list of notables, because only people who have been cited by name in a published source will be acceptable to Wikipedia (Dame Vera Lynn used to be on the list, but I removed her name because no reference was given). What all the listed speakers have in common is that they have been classed as RP speakers by John Wells in his blog, which is acceptable as a citation. Phoneticians other than John Wells are acceptable sources.
So here's the challenge: if you would like to see a proper representation of women speakers and you care about what WP says about RP, publish your list of female speakers somewhere other than WP (a blog will do), and the names can then be added to the present list. If you prefer, you could send me your list and I'll publish it here.
I don't want to keep coming back to the Wikipedia article on Received Pronunciation, but it's one of WP's most controversial topics and it gets a lot of attention (some of it unwelcome). What I am complaining about at the moment is the section on "Notable RP speakers", which has been there for years. The problem with this section is that all the speakers listed are male, with the exception that the reference to The British Royal Family necessarily includes some royal female speakers.
I could easily come up with a list of female speakers that I would consider to be speakers of RP as defined in this article, but I'm not going to. For a start, I don't believe in RP any more than I believe in Father Christmas. If I did believe in it, I wouldn't include the Royal Family as RP speakers. Finally, it's not possible just to add new names to the list of notables, because only people who have been cited by name in a published source will be acceptable to Wikipedia (Dame Vera Lynn used to be on the list, but I removed her name because no reference was given). What all the listed speakers have in common is that they have been classed as RP speakers by John Wells in his blog, which is acceptable as a citation. Phoneticians other than John Wells are acceptable sources.
So here's the challenge: if you would like to see a proper representation of women speakers and you care about what WP says about RP, publish your list of female speakers somewhere other than WP (a blog will do), and the names can then be added to the present list. If you prefer, you could send me your list and I'll publish it here.
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