This section is concerned with pronunciation. Linguistic scientists discuss the subject of pronunciation using the terms phonetics, which is the study of the way in which human beings produce speech sounds, and phonology, which is the study of the way in which speech sounds are organised and used in different languages to make the contrasts which distinguish between one word and another. This section, then, is necessarily occupied with the topic of accents. Everybody has an accent, because your accent is the way you pronounce your language, and you cannot speak without pronouncing!

Your accent normally goes together with your dialect – where dialect consists not only of your pronunciation but also of the words and grammatical forms you use – so if you speak Norfolk dialect, you naturally speak it with a Norfolk accent. But it is also possible and normal to speak the Standard English dialect with a local accent, which is what I do when I am giving a university lecture – I use Standard English grammar, but I speak in my native local Norfolk accent.

There is a small minority of people in Britain, however – especially in England – who do not have a local accent. These people are not only native speakers of Standard English, but also speak with what is called the RP accent – which is the topic of the first article. My main message in this section is that all accents are worthy of respect, and that no accents are lazy, inferior, wrong or ugly.