A chara, - Frank McNally (January 24th) calls it the "DART accent"; but whether one calls it that or an "Oxford" accent, "vulgar Mayfair", a "BBC accent", a "cultured accent", the "proper way to speak", it is, and has been, the accent used by continuity personnel and newsreaders in RTE.
In a lecture in 1983, Martin Croghan, of NIHE Glasnevin (now Dublin City University) stated that there was then "in a state of advanced development a prestige social dialect which is tending to operate socially as RP does in England, and whose phonological tendencies are similar to those of RP". RP is Received Pronunciation, described as "the most socially prestigious speech variety available in Britain".
A study of nine RTE newsreaders, carried out a year after Croghan's paper, found that their accents, in varying degrees, tended towards RP. It is still the same today. Inquiries to RTE as to what were the standards and requirements for the newsreaders, elicited replies that it was "the accent best understood by most people"; and that RTE always chose the "best and most suitable". How was that decided? RTE would not elaborate.
Let two facts be stated. There is no universally acknowledged standard accent for English. There is no such thing as no accent. Why then should this accent, spoken by the Dublin 4 set, be imposed by RTE on the rest of the country? - Is mise, Flann O Riain,
Ardan.
Eatharlach,
Co Thiobraid Arann.