‘[Sir,] Who is the English Authority on Pronunciation?’: Accent and Normative Attitude in The Times (1785–1922)

This paper highlights the role of "The Times" as a mirror of the Late Modern standard accent ideology and normative tradition. The debate on language standards — which first involved grammarians, lexicographers, and orthoepists —, thanks to the ‘new’ media, went beyond the scholarly confines, thus allowing ‘the lay community’ (Lukač 2015: 1) to have their say on linguistic matters. Some of the questions addressed concern the perception of ‘authority on pronunciation’ in nineteenth-century Britain through the analysis of a corpus of letters to the editor published in the period 1785 to 1922.