The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is an institution known and respected the
world over for its relative impartiality and objectivity compared to many other news sources,
with numerous surveys showing that the BBC is one of the most trusted sources of news
in both the UK and the US. But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk
about dinner jackets, Received Pronunciation, the Nazis, and what all of this has to do
with the BBC News.
Back when the BBC was first launched in 1922, the first General Manager of the corporation,
Scottish engineer Sir John Reith, was insistent that the BBC be as formal and quintessentially
British as possible, and he created a number of rules towards this end. (Fun fact: Reith
had no experience with anything related to broadcasting when he applied to manage the
BBC).
One thing in particular Reith stressed when he first helmed the BBC is that the newscasters
spoke the “King’s English“, known today as “BBC English” or more technically “Received
Pronunciation”, as he felt it was “a style or quality of English that would not be laughed
at in any part of the country”. Reith was also aware that the broadcasts might be played
abroad and felt that a regional accent would be difficult for non-Britain’s to understand.
Reith also noted,
We have made a special effort to secure in our stations men who, in the presentation
of program items, the reading of news bulletins and so on, can be relied upon to employ the
correct pronunciation of the English tongue… I have frequently heard that disputes as to
the right pronunciation of words have been settled by reference of the manner in which
they have been spoken on the wireless. No one would deny the great advantage of a standard
pronunciation of the language, not only in theory but in practice. Our responsibilities
in this matter are obvious, since in talking to so vast a multitude, mistakes are likely
to be promulgated to a much greater extent than was ever possible before.
Further, in the 1929 BBC Handbook, it was noted that their pronunciation guidelines
in this matter “[are] not to be regarded as implying that all other pronunciations
are wrong: the recommendations are made in order to ensure uniformity of practice, and
to protect the Announcers from the criticism to which the very peculiar nature of their
work renders them liable.”
As for Received Pronunciation or RP as it’s often abbreviated to, it is defined as: “The
standard form of British English pronunciation” (Though, funny enough, RP is only used by
an estimated 2-3% of English people today, with the number of Scottish, Irish and Welsh
users being described as “negligible”.)
First defined in 1869 by linguist, A. J. Ellis, Received Pronunciation basically entails pronouncing
your words “properly” as they are written in the dictionary.
Although the general idea behind Received Pronunciation is to attempt to remove a person’s
regional accent, it is nonetheless commonly associated with the south of England and the
upper class. Meaning that although Received Pronunciation masks a person’s regional
background, it says a lot about a person’s social upbringing and how they were educated.
With this in mind, although one of Reith’s goals in using RP was to appeal to the widest
audience possible, many listeners still felt alienated by the broadcasts being beamed into
their homes because of this “upper class” accent being used. Despite this, newscasters
were required to use Received Pronunciation right up until World War 2.
Why did this change during the war? The Ministry of Information was worried about the Nazis
hijacking the radio waves.
You see, during World War 2, Nazi Germany invested a lot of time and money in training
its spies and propagandists to speak using perfect Received Pronunciation so that they
could effectively pass as Brits. Thus, the Ministry of Information became quite concerned
that the Nazis could potentially issue orders over the radio in a voice that would be indistinguishable
from one of their own newscasters. In addition, the then Deputy Prime Minister, Clement Attlee,
noted the aforementioned fact that the total monopoly newscasters with upper class sounding
voices had on the news was offensive to the working class.
This image of newsreaders being stuffy, upper class toffs wasn’t helped by an edict passed
down in 1926 from Reith that stated any newscaster reading the news after 8PM had to wear a dinner
jacket while on air, despite that no one could see them. Former BBC radio personality Stuart
Hibberd noted of this,
Personally, I have always thought it only right and proper that announcers should wear
evening dress on duty… There are, of course, certain disadvantages. It is not ideal kit
in which to read the News- I myself hate having anything tight around my neck when broadcasting-
and I remember that more than once the engineers said that my shirt-front creaked during the
reading of the bulletin. (This- is London, 1950)
In any event, as a result of the concerns of Attlee and the Ministry of Information,
the BBC hired several newscasters possessing broad regional accents that would be more
difficult for Nazis to perfectly copy and would hopefully appeal to the “common man”.
The first person to read the news on the BBC possessing a regional accent was one Wilfred
Pickles, who spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent. Far from being a popular move, when
Pickles was hired by the BBC in 1941, his accent offended many listeners so much that
they wrote letters to the BBC, blasting them for having the audacity to sully the news
with the (smooth, sensual sounds of the amazing and superior) Yorkshireman’s voice. (Fun
fact: The author of this piece has the same accent… No big deal.)
In fact, by 1949, Pickles himself noted that because of his accent, he had become the “central
feature in a heated national controversy”, during which Pickles was frequently made fun
of by various London cartoonists and in other forms of popular media.
Nonetheless, after the end of World War 2, the BBC continued to loosen its guidelines
and with the advent of more localised news, began to hire more people who spoke with the
respective accent of the region they were being broadcast.
That said, the BBC does continue to generally use newscasters with more mild accents in
international broadcasts to make sure they are as understandable as possible to those
audiences.