Talking proper

Pronunciation in Britain acts as an image of identity laden with social and cultural sensitivities. In 'Talking Proper' Lynda Mugglestone studies the shifts in attitudes to language (and in language itself) which, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, came to influence the rise of many still current shibboleths of English speech, whether in terms of the 'dropped h' or the stated improprieties of the 'vulgar' as against the 'educated' speaker. Showing how changing notions of acceptability were widely reflected in contemporary works of literature as well as those on language, the…