https://www.zhihu.com/video/1135564396607700992
RP,在牛津词典的定义中,被称为“the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England”,即“英格兰南部地区的标准发音”。
“Received Pronunciation”这个称谓,最早的时间不详,不过早在19世纪就有语言学家提到过。比如,语言学家Alexander Ellis曾经提出:
In the present day we may, however, recognise a received pronunciation [note no use of capitals] all over the country, not widely differing in any particular locality, and admitting a certain degree of variety. It may be especially considered as the educated pronunciation of the metropolis, of the court, the pulpit and the bar.
后来,语言学家Daniel Jones在他编纂的几本词典中正式使用了“Received Pronunciation”这个术语,来指称“standard spoken British English”(标准英式英语口语)。但是他也同时指出,
I wish it to be understood that other types of pronunciation exist which may be considered equally good.
There has been no attempt to establish a uniform spoken language [...] The policy might be described as that of seeking acommon denominator of educated speech'.
It's because the dominant accent in the UK is 'received pronunciation’, or now what we call Standard Southern British. This is the kind of way the wealthy and highly educated traditionally spoke, so it dominated education, broadcasting and public office. Cockney on the other hand, is an accent more associated with the working class, so it hasn't spread in the same way. However, Cockney has had an influence on English in a number of ways. Firstly, the English language is littered with ‘Cockney rhyming slang’. This was like a code language that Cockneys used to hide what they were doing from the police. It works like this: (eg: if they wanted to hide the word ‘stairs’ they would think of a word it rhymed with, (eg ‘pears’), and then would think of a different word that we associate with it, eg: apples. So the code for ‘stairs’ would be: ‘apples and pears’Cockney rhyming slang is now widely known and used around the UK, basically just for fun!
AND…if you’re interested
The Cockney type accent is becoming much more common in the UK nowadays. You can see it with younger people (normally guys) using a glottal stop instead of a ‘t’ (eg: so rather than saying better, they wouldn’t pronounce the t, replacing it with a sound from the glottis, like ‘waer’ instead of ‘water’). Or saying ‘fink’ for ‘think’. There are lots of examples…so in the future more of us may be speaking like Cockneys. I’m not sure why this is, maybe the influence of people on TV.