In modern times, this perception has changed, and regional accents are more accepted.Īs I researched the various accents used, I wondered how accents were assigned to characters. According to the British native, it is associated with less intelligence and education. The Cockney accent is used in London and South East England. I couldn’t find any stereotypes associated with this accent, although I will later explain why I think it’s related to comic relief in this movie. The Scottish English accent is spoken in Scotland. According to the British native, and Wikipedia, the accent is associated with farming, seafaring, rural simplicity, and a lack of education. The West Country dialect originates from South West England - derived from the West Saxon dialect of Old English and influenced by Welsh and Cornish. Recently, due to social inclusion efforts, RP is losing its stronghold, and powerful positions are increasingly taken by those with regional accents.
From the 20th century, RP represented social authority, power, and education (British Library, 2014). It’s called Oxford English because the ruling and privileged classes attended the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the 19th century, and their accent began to gain a unique status. The term BBC English exists because all commentators on BBC had to use RP, which was considered the most understood variety of English in the UK and overseas. It’s also called the Queen’s English (although the Queen speaks in a variation of RP), BBC English, and Oxford English. However, the accent does reveal a lot about a person’s social and educational background. You cannot tell where a person is from by hearing this accent.
I discovered that RP, the most widely used accent in the movie, is a regionally neutral middle-class accent of England. I understood the history and social prejudices associated with the accents by consulting both the internet and a British native who has lived in Southampton her whole life. The Hobbits primarily speak in the West Country dialect, and other characters speak in the Cockney and Scottish dialects of English. Most of them speak in Received Pronunciation or RP. Through his rationale, I observed that all characters speak in variations of the British accent. As the dialect coach for The Lord of the Rings, Jack taught Middle-Earth accents and non-English fictional languages such as Elvish and Black Speech to the cast. Jack was a British dialect coach who worked on various movies such as Avengers: Infinity War, Star Wars, and Troy. I referred to the movie’s dialect coach Andrew Jack’s accent rationale (Board 77, 2005), to determine which accent was used by each character. Thus, a fantasy world can provide a broad scope for analysis since accents are mainly chosen based on stereotypes associated with them.
Lord of the rings rp movie#
Because the locations in this movie are mythical, the characters’ accents cannot be attributed to their geographical location and must have been found suitable in another way. Together, they seek to destroy the ring and save the world. To prevent this, Frodo, along with the Hobbits Samwise (Sam), Merry, and Pippin, the humans Aragorn and Boromir, the wizard Gandalf, the elf Legolas, and the dwarf Gimli, form the fellowship of the ring. If this ring falls into the hands of Sauron, the antagonist, the whole world will come under his control. In this movie, a Hobbit named Frodo Baggins embarks on his journey to destroy a ring of enormous power, the One Ring. The Fellowship of the Ring introduces us to Middle Earth: the fantasy world where Hobbits, elves, dwarves, humans, and other creatures exist.