The Mitford Voice

Anotace:  e present paper sets out to investigate whether the conservative or upper RP accent of selected elderly speakers, namely three of the Mitford sisters, all members of the English aristocracy, manifests change or diachronic stability and uniformity over time.  e typical conservative RP features looked for were: the LOT-CLOTH split, absence of the CURE-FORCE merger, SQUARE vowel realised as diphthong /εə/, SMOOTHING, KIT vowel in unstressed ending syllables and TRAP vowel realised as /æ/ instead of /a/.  e procedure of the study consisted in the identifi cation of the presence or absence of these specifi c features in the speech of three selected speakers in recordings made over, at least, a 15-year time span.  e individuals studied were: Lady Mosley (née Diana Freeman-Mitford), Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford and Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (née Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford).  e results of these comparisons suggest that elderly upper RP speakers are not highly infl uenced by changes in pronunciation taking place around them and mostly maintain the preferred pronunciation of their youth. In some cases, however, a general uncertainty amongst speakers of the accent, here detected in the presence of the CURE-FORCE merger, does aff ect the speech of individuals over the course of time.