ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of language attitudes of this kind by looking at a case study of a specific prestigious accent of English within a UK context, from the consciousness fostered during the eighteenth century to the resistance to assumptions about a hierarchy of accent and social/cultural worth that is evident today. Learning 'pernouncing' was, as George Eliot indicates (not least by the strategic indications of regional pronunciation which Eliot allocates to Mr Macey, the tailor and parish dark of Raveloe), something of a new development in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century education. Gill's textbook places a categorical emphasis on correct pronunciation ('orthoepy') as one of the prime objectives of instruction within the school, Differences of pronunciation are, however; framed by notions of subjective inequality, by which certain pronunciations are depicted as intrinsically 'inferior'.
